"It is only this conduct of Brooke's. I really think somebody should
speak to him."
"What? meaning to stand?" said Mr. Cadwallader, going on with the
arrangement of the reels which he had just been turning. "I hardly
think he means it. But where's the harm, if he likes it? Any one who
objects to Whiggery should be glad when the Whigs don't put up the
strongest fellow. They won't overturn the Constitution with our friend
Brooke's head for a battering ram."
"Oh, I don't mean that," said Sir James, who, after putting down his
hat and throwing himself into a chair, had begun to nurse his leg and
examine the sole of his boot with much bitterness. "I mean this
marriage. I mean his letting that blooming young girl marry Casaubon."
"What is the matter with Casaubon? I see no harm in him--if the girl
likes him."
"She is too young to know what she likes. Her guardian ought to
interfere. He ought not to allow the thing to be done in this headlong
manner. I wonder a man like you, Cadwallader--a man with daughters,
can look at the affair with indifference: and with such a heart as
yours! Do think seriously about it."
"I am not joking; I am as serious as possible," said the Rector, with a
provoking little inward laugh. "You are as bad as Elinor. She has
been wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that
her friends had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she
married me."
"But look at Casaubon," said Sir James, indignantly. "He must be
fifty, and I don't believe he could ever have been much more than the
shadow of a man. Look at his legs!"
"Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your
own way in the world. You don't under stand women. They don't admire
you half so much as you admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her
sisters that she married me for my ugliness--it was so various and
amusing that it had quite conquered her prudence."
"You! it was easy enough for a woman to love you. But this is no
question of beauty. I don't like Casaubon." This was Sir James's
strongest way of implying that he thought ill of a man's character.
"Why? what do you know against him?" said the Rector laying down his
reels, and putting his thumbs into his armholes with an air of
attention.
Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons:
it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being
told, since he only felt what was reasonable. At last he said--