"And you shall have my daughter,
And twenty thousand pound."

"Don't let him up, dear sweetheart,
The portion is too small."
"O stay your hand," the old man said,
"And you shall have it all."

The lawyer was loud in his admiration of this classical piece, and what
he afterwards found was The Crew's original and only tune. "That was the
kind of wife for a poor man," remarked Sylvanus, meditatively; "but she
was mighty hard on her old dad."

"They're a poor lot, the whole pack of them," said the lawyer, savagely,
thinking of the quandary in which he and his friend were placed.

"Who is?" asked The Crew.

"Why, the women, to be sure."

"Look here, Mister, my name may be Sylvanus, but I know I'm pretty
rough, for all that. But, rough as I am, I don't sit quiet and let any
man, no, not as good friends as you and me has been, say a word agin the
wimmen. When I think o' these yere gals as was in this blessed schooner
last summer, I feel it my juty, bein' I'm one o' them as helped to sail
her then, to stand up fer all wimmen kind, and, no offence meant. I
guess your own mother's one o' the good sort, now wasn't she?"

"I should say she is," replied Coristine; "there are splendid women in
the world, but they're all married."