162 THERE IS NO HURRY.

but the prudent father of the would-be bride-
groom thought it right to take an early oppor-
tunity of waiting upon the doctor, stating his
son’s ‘prospects, and. frankly asking what sam
Dr. Adams proposed settling on his daughter.
Great, indeed, was his astonishment at the re-
ply—* He should not be able to give his daugh-
ter anything immediately, but at his death.”
The doctor, for the first time for many years,
felt the bitterness of his false position. He he-
sitated, degraded by the knowledge that he must
sink in the opinion of the man of the world by
whom he was addressed; he was irritated at
his want of available funds being known; and
though well aware that the affections of his dar-
ling child were bound up in the son of the very
gentlemanly but most prudent person who sat
before him, he was so high and so irritable in
his bearing, that the fathers parted, not in anger,
but in any thing but good feeling.

Sir Augustus Barry was not slow to set be-
fore his son the disadvantages of a union where
the extravagant habits of Miss Adams had no
more stable support than her father’s life; he
argued that a want of forethought in the pa-
rents would be likely to produce a want of fore-
thought in the children; and knowing well what
could be done with such means as Dr. Adams
had had at his command for years, he was not
inclined to put a kind construction upon so total
a want of the very quality which he considered