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 think we can
believe he has seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him, and
that she has refused him.'

'Answer, and answer not, say Solomon,' replied her brother.
'When your brother had said to your mother that he had asked
her no less than five times, and that it was so, 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 my 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 to these 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; if not, I have no more to say
till I hear further.'

This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the
mother, because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters,