“And is this possible, Mrs. Betty?” says the old lady. “Then you have been much juster to us than we have been to you; for we have all looked upon you as a kind of snare to my son; and I had a proposal to make you, for your removing for fear of it; but I had not yet mentioned it to you, because I was afraid of grieving you too much, lest it should throw you down again, for we have a respect for you still, though not so much as to have it be the ruin of my son; but if it be as you say, we have all wronged you very much.”
“As to the truth of what I say, madam,” said I, “I refer to your son himself, if he will do me any justice, he must tell you the story just as I have told it.”
Away goes the old lady to her daughters, and tells them the whole story, just as I had told it her, and they were surprised at it, you may be sure, as I believed they would be; one said she could never have thought it, another said Robin was a fool; a third said, she would not believe a word of it, and she would warrant that Robin would tell the story another way; but the old lady, who was resolved to go to the bottom of it, before I could have the least opportunity of acquainting her son with what had passed, resolved too, that she would talk with her son immediately, and to that purpose sent for him, for he was gone but to a lawyer’s house in the town, and upon her sending he returned immediately.
Upon his coming up to them, for they were all together, “Sit down, Robin,” says the old lady, ‘I must have some talk with you.”
“With all my heart, madam,” says Robin, looking very merry, “I hope it is about a good wife, for I am at a great loss in that affair.”
“How can that be,” says his mother, “did you not say you resolved to have Mrs. Betty?”
“Ay, madam,” says Robin, “but there is one that has forbid the banns.”
“Forbid the banns, who can that be?”
“Even Mrs. Betty herself,” says Robin.
“How so,” says his mother, “have you not asked her the question then?”
“Yes indeed, madam,” says Robin, “I have attacked her in form five times since she was sick, and am beaten off: the jade is so stout, she won’t capitulate, nor yield upon any terms except such as I can’t effectually grant.”
“Explain yourself,” says the mother, “for I am surprised, I do not understand you. I hope you are not in earnest.”
“Why, madam,” says he, “the case is plain enough upon me, it explains itself; she won’t have me, she says. Is not that plain enough? I think ‘tis plain, and pretty rough too.”
“Well, but,” says the mother, “you talk of conditions, that you cannot grant. What does she want, a settlement? Her jointure ought to be according to her portion; what does she bring?”
“Nay, as to fortune,” says Robin, “she is rich enough; I am satisfied in that point; but ‘tis that I am not able to come up to her terms, and she is positive she will not have me without.”
Here the sisters put in. “Madam,” says the second sister, “‘tis impossible to be serious with him, he will never give a direct answer to anything; you had better let him alone, and talk no more of it, you know how to dispose of her out of his way.”
Robin was a little warmed with his sister’s rudeness, but he was even with her presently: “There are two sorts of people, madam,” says he, turning to his mother, “that there is no contending with, that is a wise body and a fool. ‘Tis a little hard I should engage with both of them together.”
The younger sister then put in, “We must be fools indeed,” says she, “in my brother’s opinion, that he should make us believe he has seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him, and she has refused him.”
“‘Answer, and answer not,’ says Solomon,” replied her brother. “When your brother had said that he had asked her no less than five times, and that she positively denied him, methinks a younger sister need not question the truth of it, when her mother did not.”
“My mother, you see, did not understand it,” says the second sister.
“There’s some difference,” says Robin, “between desiring me to explain it, and telling me she did not believe it.”
“Well, but son,” says the old lady, “if you are disposed to let us into the mystery of it, what were these hard conditions?”
“Yes, madam,” says Robin, “I had done it before now, if the teasers here had not worried me by way of interruption. The conditions are, that I bring my father and you to consent to it, and without that, she protests, she will never see me more upon that head; and the conditions, as I said, I suppose I shall never be able to grant. I hope my warm sisters will be answered now, and blush a little.”
This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the mother, because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters they stood mute a great while; but the mother said with some passion, “Well, I heard this before, but I could not believe it, but if it is so, then we have all done Betty wrong, and she has behaved better than I expected.”
“Nay,” says the eldest sister, “if it is so, she has acted handsomely indeed.”
“I confess,” says the mother, “it was none of her fault, if he was enough fool to take a fancy to her; but to give such an answer to him, shews more respect to us, than I can tell how to express; I shall value the girl the better for it, as long as I know her.”
“But I shall not,” says Robin, “unless you will give your consent.”
“I’ll consider of that awhile,” says the mother. “I assure you, if there were not some other objections, this conduct of hers would go a great way to bring me to consent.”
“I wish it would go quite through with it,” says Robin, “if you had as much thought about making me easy, as you have about making me rich, you would soon consent to it.”
“Why Robin,” says the mother again, “are you really in earnest? Would you fain have her?”
“Really, madam,” says Robin, “I think ‘tis hard you should question me again upon that head; I won’t say that I will have her, how can I resolve that point, when you see I cannot have her without your consent? But this I will say, I am earnest that I will never have anybody else, if I can help it; Betty or nobody is the word, and the question which of the two shall be in your breast to decide, madam, provided only, that my good-humoured sisters here may have no vote in it.”
All this was dreadful to me, for the mother began to yield, and Robin pressed her home in it. On the other hand, she advised with the eldest son, and he used all the arguments in the world to persuade her to consent; alleging his brother’s passionate love for me, and my generous regard to the family, in refusing my own advantages upon such a nice point of honour, and a thousand such things; and as to the father, he was a man in a hurry of public affairs, and getting money, seldom at home, thoughtful of the main chance, but left all those things to his wife.
You may easily believe, that when the plot was thus, as they thought, broke out: it was not so difficult, or so dangerous, for the elder brother, who nobody suspected of anything, to have a freer access than before. Nay, the mother, which was just as he wished, proposed it to him to talk with