"Just
listen, and they make a big O. The donkey! He owns you've got influence,
and he offers he'll be silent if you'll pledge your word to marry him.
I'm not sure he didn't say, within the year. I told him to look sharp not
to be knocked down again. Mart Tinman for my son-in-law! That's an upside
down of my expectations, as good as being at the antipodes without a
second voyage back! I let him know you were engaged."
Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with a
little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a
breeze curves the leaden winter lake here and there. She could not get
his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to
understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing
into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds--tradition telling
us she has absolutely beheld foot of burglar under bed; and lo! she
stares, and, cunningly to moderate her horror, doubts, yet cannot but
believe that there is a leg, and a trunk, and a head, and two terrible
arms, bearing pistols, to follow.
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