The Kellys and the O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope
page 48 of 643 (07%)
page 48 of 643 (07%)
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"My lordship's grandfather ought to have looked after that himself. If
those are all your scruples they needn't stick in your throat much." "I said as much as that to myself, too. So I soon went to work. I was rather shy about it at first; but the girls helped me. They put it into her head, I think, before I mentioned it at all. However, by degrees, I asked her plump, whether she'd any mind to be Mrs. Kelly? and, though she didn't say 'yes,' she didn't say 'no.'" "But how the devil, man, did you manage to get at her? I'm told Barry watches her like a dragon, ever since he read his father's will." "He couldn't watch her so close, but what she could make her way down to mother's shop now and again. Or, for the matter of that, but what I could make my way up to the house." "That's true, for what need she mind Barry, now? She may marry whom she pleases, and needn't tell him, unless she likes, until the priest has his book ready." "Ah, my lord! but there's the rub. She is afraid of Barry; and though she didn't say so, she won't agree to tell him, or to let me tell him, or just to let the priest walk into the house without telling him. She's fond of Barry, though, for the life of me, I can't see what there is in him for anybody to be fond of. He and his father led her the divil's own life mewed up there, because she wouldn't be a nun. But still is both fond and afraid of him; and, though I don't think she'll marry anybody else--at laist not yet awhile, I don't think she'll ever get courage to marry me--at any rate, not in the ordinary way." |
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