"I'm not so unjust. Poor Launcie! I saw him once at a ball in Kendal. Are you sure he was drowned?"
"I followed him to Whitehaven, and found out that he had gone away in a ship that never came home. Mother and Launcie were in bad bread when he left, and she never fretted for him as she did for Tom."
"Why did you not tell me all this before?"
"I said to myself, there's time enough yet to be planning husbands for girls that haven't a thought of the kind. We were very happy with them; I couldn't bear to break things up; and I never once feared about Steve Latrigg, not I."
"What does your brother and his wife say?"
"Tom is with me. As for his wife, I know nothing of her, and she knows nothing of us. She has been in England a good many times, but she never said she would like to come and see us, and my mother never wanted to see her; so there wasn't a compliment wasted, you see. Eh? What?"
"No, I don't see, William. All about it is in a muddle, and I must say I never heard tell of such ways. It is like offering your own flesh and blood for sale. And to people who want nothing to do with us. I'm astonished at you, squire."
"Don't go on so, Alice. Tom and I never had any falling out. He just got out of the way of writing. He likes India, and he had his own reasons for not liking England in any shape you could offer England to him. There's no back reckonings between Tom and me, and he'll be glad for Julius to come to his own people. We will ask Julius to Sandal; and you say, yourself, that the half of young folks' loving is in being handy to each other. Eh? What?"
"I never thought you would bring my words up that way. But I'll tell you one thing, my girls are not made of melted wax, William. You'll be a wise man, and a strong man, if you get a ring on their fingers, if they don't want it there. Sophia will say very soft and sweet, 'No, thank you, father;' and you'll move Scawfell and Langdale Pikes before you get her beyond it. As for Charlotte, you yourself will stand 'making' better than she will. And you know that nothing short of an earthquake can lift you an inch outside your own way."
And perhaps Sandal thought the hyperbole a compliment; for he smiled a little, and walked away, with what his wife privately called "a peacocky air," saying something about "Greek meeting Greek" as he did so. Mrs. Sandal did not in the least understand him: she wondered a little over the remark, and then dismissed it as "some of the squire's foolishness."