"Ah, for that———!" said Gaston.
"He's so sweet. I'm not a bit afraid of him," Francie declared.
"Why should you be?"
"Well, I am of you," the girl went on.
"Much you show it!" her lover exclaimed.
"Yes, I am," she insisted, "at the bottom of all."
"Well, that's what a lady should be—of her husband."
"Well, I don't know; I'm more afraid than that. You'll see."
"I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense," said Gaston Probert.
Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their honourable visitor; he listened in genial, unprejudiced silence. It is a sign of his prospective son-in-law's perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knew this silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it did not mean that he had not been pleased. Mr. Dosson had simply nothing to say; he had not, like Gaston, a sensitive plate in his brain, and the important events of his life had never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely no history of that sort, and Mr. Probert's appearance had not produced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked his father he would have said, at the most, "Oh, I guess he's all right!" But what was more candid even than this, in Gaston's view (and it
