Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/237

 He doesn't know a good tutor when he sees one. The impertinent young popinjay! Doesn't appreciate anything. No! God bless my soul, why he's no more respect for me than a five-barred gate. He's always doing something to jar me. Why, do you know, that the cool-faced young malefactor announced the other day in the most insolent manner that he was going to marry a barmaid? Yes, I assure you he did. He announced to me, sir, in the most condescending tones, as if he were conferring an inestimable favour upon my head, that he thought I ran a very good chance of having that girl Imogene for my daughter-in-law. You know Imogene, that serves and waits and does innumerable dirty jobs at the Ship Inn; and when I expostulated in fatherly tones, why, bless me, if the young spitfire didn't fly into a passion, crying out that it was high time one of the Cobtrees introduced some good looks into the family. Said that to me, mind you—his natural father that brought him into the world. I told him that, used those very words, and what does he do but begin to bow and scrape and praise and thank me for bringing him into the world at the same period as that black-haired bargirl, just as if his mother and I had timed the thing to a nicety! Why, when I come to think of it, she's the daughter of a common pirate, that rascally, scoundrelly Clegg, who was hanged at Rye. Isn't she now? And she's to be my daughter-in-law! Now, Doctor Syn, in the name of Romney Marsh, what