“The want of it is dreadful.”
“Thy father got a thousand pounds this morning. If he does not put most of it into a factory, he will put it into bread, which will be eaten to-day and wanted again to-morrow. That would make short work of a thousand pounds.”
“Have you reminded father of that?”
“I doan’t need to. Father seems an easy-going man but he thinks of iverything; and when he hes to act no one strikes the iron quicker and harder. If thou saw him in London, if thou heard him in the House, brow-beating the Whigs and standing up for Peel and Wellington and others, thou would wonder however thou dared to tease, and contradict, and coax him in Annis. Thou would that! Now I am going to the lower summer house for an hour. Send away thy letters, and let me alone a bit.”
“I know. I saw father going down the garden. He is going to the summer house also; he intends to tell you, mother, what he is going to say to-night. He always reads, or recites his speeches to you. I have heard him sometimes.”
“Then thou ought to be ashamed to speak of it! I am astonished at thy want of honor! If by chance, thou found out some reserved way of thy father it should have been held by thee as a sacred, inviolable secret. Not even to me, should thou have dared to speak of it. I am sorry, indeed, to hev to teach thee this point of childhood’s honor. I thought it would be natural to the daughter of Antony and Annie Annis!”
“Mother! Forgive me! I am ashamed and sorry and oh, do not, for my sake, tell father! My dear, dear father! You have made it look like mocking him—I never thought how shameful it could look—oh, I never thought about it! I never spoke of it before! I never did!”
“Well, then, see thou never again listens to what was not intended for thee to hear. It would be a pretty state of things, if thy father hed to go somewhere out of the way of listeners to get a bit of private talk with me.”
“Mother, don’t be so cruel to me.”
“Was thou trying to compliment me or was thou scorning a bit about thy father’s ways? If thou thought I would feel complimented by being set above him that thought was as far wrong as it could possibly get.”