"This state of things cannot go on much longer, Sophia."
"Certainly it cannot. Mother must look after her own house soon."
"I would speak to her to-day, Sophia. She has had six weeks now to arrange her plans, and next month I want to begin and put the house into decent condition. I think I will write to London this afternoon, and tell Jeffcott to send the polishers and painters on the 15th of March."
"Mother is so slow about things, I don't think she will be ready to move so early."
"Oh, I really can't stand them any longer! I can't indeed, Sophia, and I won't. I did not marry your mother and sister, nor yet buy them with the place. Your mother has her recognized rights in the estate, and she has a dower-house to which to retire; and the sooner she goes there now, the better. You may tell her I say so."
"You may as well tell her yourself, Julius."
"Do you wish me to be insulted by your sister Charlotte again? It is too bad to put me in such a position. I cannot punish two women, even for such shameful innuendos as I had to take when she sat at the head of the table. You ought to reflect, too, that the rooms they occupy are the best rooms in the house,—the master's rooms. I am going to have the oak walls polished, in order to bring out the carvings; and I think we will choose green and white for the carpets and curtains. The present furniture is dreadfully old-fashioned, and horribly full of old memories."
"Well, then, I shall give mother to understand that we expect to make these changes very soon."
"Depend upon it, the sooner your mother and Charlotte go to their own house, the better for all parties. For, if we do not insist upon it, they will stay and stay, until that Latrigg young man has his house finished. Then Charlotte will expect to be married from here, and we shall have all the trouble and expense of the affair. Oh, I tell you, Sophia, I see through the whole plan! But reckoning without me, and reckoning with me, are different things."
This conversation took place after a most unpleasant lunch. Julius had come to it in a fretful, hypercritical mood. He had been calculating what his proposed changes would cost, and the sum total had given him a slight shock. He was like many extravagant people, subject to passing spells of almost contemptible economy; and at that hour the proposed future outlay of thousands did not trouble him so much as the actual penny-half-penny value of his mother-in-law's lunch.