"It sticks in your throat! And it goes against your stomach! And all this before you've been even asked to swallow it! Aren't you considerably premature?"
"You think there's a chance she won't—?" His manner was openly eager.
"Yes—but hold your tongue, and pay up your five hundred for early possession."
"Upon my soul, Austin, I never more than half believed it. But when everybody buzzes a thing into a man's ears—and his own wife first among them—and he sees no other meaning of things, why——"
"The best of us are likely to give in—yes! Well, I've got another appointment—at Alison's."
"Alison's? What have you got to do with Alison these days?"
"Come now, does your position interfere with your friendships? What have you to do with Mrs. Jepps?"
"It was my wife. I never see the old witch."
"I've no wife—so I have to face the devil on my own account."
From my talk with Cartmell I was the more anxious for the success of my other appointment. That might help to free Jenny from the danger of being made so angry as to do what she hated to do, and what faithful old Cartmell could not stomach. If anything could drive her to it, it would be a slight, a harshness, a rudeness, toward Margaret. How she had flared up at Alison's objections! If Margaret were spurned, to Jenny's mind Octon also was again spurned. Then the temper would still have to be reckoned with—the temper under disappointment as well as wrath; for Jenny built upon this interview.