human
I want you to give up your bedroom for a few weeks, and change into the back room. We are about to have a visitor.
gpt
Good gracious! mother. It must be somebody important, or you would not want me to budge.
human
It is your half-cousin, Mildred Dixon. I have invited her to stay for a month, and she has agreed to do so.
gpt
Wonders will never cease,
human
You have not forgotten her I hope.
gpt
Not a bit of it, though it must be seven or eight years since I saw her last. But what is your object in inviting her, if I may make so bold as to ask?
human
My object is that you should make love to her, propose to her, and by-and-bye make her your wife.
gpt
Have you taken leave of your senses, _madre mia?_
human
I have no reason to think so, my son.
gpt
I marry Mildred Dixon! The notion is too utterly preposterous. In the first place she's six years older than I am. Then she's awfully freckled, and wears spectacles, and has a squat figure. I'd as soon marry my grandmother, if the old lady were alive.
human
What have either her looks or her age to do with the affair? Miss Dixon is both accomplished and amiable, and has, in addition, a fortune of twenty thousand pounds.
gpt
Mother, this thing is not a suggestion of your own. I can pretty well guess the quarter from whence it emanates.
human
And what then? Is not your welfare at the bottom of the scheme? People at the head of a prosperous concern don't usually choose a virtual beggar for their partner; but no one could call a man with twenty thousand pounds at his back by any such title!