'If that didn't do his business,
I'd extract it afterwards, and kill him that way.'
Mr. Benjamin Allen gazed abstractedly on his friend for some
minutes in silence, and then said--
'You have never proposed to her, point-blank, Bob?'
'No. Because I saw it would be of no use,' replied Mr. Robert
Sawyer.
'You shall do it, before you are twenty-four hours older,'
retorted Ben, with desperate calmness. 'She shall have you, or I'll
know the reason why. I'll exert my authority.'
'Well,' said Mr. Bob Sawyer, 'we shall see.'
'We shall see, my friend,' replied Mr. Ben Allen fiercely. He
paused for a few seconds, and added in a voice broken by
emotion, 'You have loved her from a child, my friend. You loved
her when we were boys at school together, and, even then, she
was wayward and slighted your young feelings. Do you recollect,
with all the eagerness of a child's love, one day pressing upon her
acceptance, two small caraway-seed biscuits and one sweet
apple, neatly folded into a circular parcel with the leaf of a
copy-book?'
'I do,' replied Bob Sawyer.
'She slighted that, I think?' said Ben Allen.
'She did,' rejoined Bob.
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