It's little respect you pay to my
feelings, or ever did."
"I trust, my most amiable mother, that you won't suffer the equability
of your temper to be disturbed by anything proceeding from such an
antiphlogistic source. Allow me to say, Mr. Burke, that I have higher
game in view, and that for the present I must beg respectfully to
decline the proposal which you so kindly made, fully sensible as I am
of the honor you intended for me. If you will only exercise a little
patience, however, perhaps I shall have the pleasure ere long of
presenting to you a lady of high accomplishments, amiable manners, and
very considerable beauty."
"Not a 'Crazy Jane' bargain, I hope?"
"Really, Mr. Burke, you are pleased to be sarcastic; but as for honest
Katsey, have the goodness to take her out of your eye as soon as
possible, for she only blinds you to your own interest and to mine."
"You wouldn't marry Kathleen, then?"
"For the present I say most assuredly not," replied the son, in the same
ironical and polite tone.
"Because," continued his father, with a very grave smile, in which there
was, to say truth, a good deal of the grin visible, "as poor Gerald was
a good deal anxious about the matther, I said I'd try and make you marry
her--_to oblige him_."
Hycy almost, if not altogether, lost his equanimity by the contemptuous
sarcasm implied in these words.
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