“Don’t sit there prating, you old hag! If you open your lips again, I’ll squeeze the life out of you, I will, you miserable old thing. I hate the sight of you!”
And, from the number of times that old Sir Andrew raised his chair in anger, it seemed probable that at some time, in moments of fury, he really would send the aged and afflicted woman unexpectedly into eternity.
Augustus Fumbleton, Esq., it must be confessed, was not at all troubled with matrimonial jars or grievances.
He was not a married man, but, as he often expressed it, “soon would be.”
“In a month or two, all this business of Phillip’s will be over, and then I’ll settle down,” he thought, “turn over a new leaf, and have his wife for my mistress. What a head old Sir Andrew, her father, has got to be sure.
“He attends church regularly, I hear, and is looked upon out in the country as a perfect ‘saint.’
“Ah, church-going folks ain’t always the best. There’s many a man sits with a prayer book in his hand who’s thinking of something else. Never mind, we’ll do this little trick and then I’ll cry ‘quits.’”
If Messrs. Redgill, Sir Andrew and Fumbleton were situated as we have described, Charley Warbeck, Ned’s brother, was in the greatest sorrow and concern for the safety of his young wife, and very despondent in spirits.
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