The girl turned honestly flat. "But on whom?"
"On me, to begin with--by not being a fool. And then, Miss, on _him_."
Erect, but as if paralysed, she had the air of facing the worst. "On Captain Yule?"
"But, father," she asked in evident anguish--"to _what_ point?"
Miss Prodmore faltered. "Go down on his knees?"
Her father considered. "No--they don't do that now."
Mr. Prodmore carried his eyes with a certain sustained majesty to a remote point. "He will know himself."
"Oh, no, indeed, he won't," the girl cried; "they don't _ever_!"
"Then the sooner they learn--whoever teaches 'em!--the better: the better I mean in particular," Mr. Prodmore added with an intention discernibly vicious, "for the master of this house. I'll guarantee that he shall understand that," he concluded, "for I shall do my part."
She looked at him as if his part were really to be hated. "But how on earth, sir, can I ever do mine? To begin with, you know, I've never even seen him."
Mr. Prodmore took out his watch; then, having consulted it, put it back with a gesture that seemed to dispose at the same time and in the same manner of the objection. "You'll see him _now_--from one moment to the other. He's remarkably handsome, remarkably young, remarkably ambitious, and remarkably clever. He has one of the best and oldest names in this part of the country--a name that, far and wide here, one could do so much with that I'm simply indignant to see him do so little. I propose, my dear, to do with it all he hasn't, and I further propose, to that end, first to get hold of it. It's you, Miss Prodmore, who shall take it out of the fire."
"Out of the mud, if you prefer. You must pick it up, do you see? My plan is, in short," Mr. Prodmore pursued, "that when we've brushed it off and rubbed it down a bit, blown away the dust and touched up the rust, my daughter shall gracefully bear it."
She could only oppose, now, a stiff, thick transparency that yielded a view of the course in her own veins, after all, however, mingled with a feebler fluid, of the passionate blood of the Prodmores. "And pray is it also Captain Yule's plan?"
Her father's face warned her off the ground of irony, but he replied without violence. "His plans have not yet quite matured. But nothing is more natural," he added with an ominous smile, "than that they shall do so on the sunny south wall of Miss Prodmore's best manner."