"Then I'm not to marry at all."
"You've gone on and you haven't,—that's all. I ain't a-finding no fault. But you haven't,—and I'm the sufferer." Here Mrs Baggett began to sob, and to wipe her eyes with a clean handkerchief, which she must surely have brought into the room for the purpose. "If you had taken some beautiful young lady—"
"I have taken a beautiful young lady," said Mr Whittlestaff, now becoming more angry than ever.
"You won't listen to me, sir, and then you boil over like that. No doubt Miss Mary is as beautiful as the best on 'em. I knew how it would be when she came among us with her streaky brown cheeks, ou'd make an anchor wish to kiss 'em." Here Mr Whittlestaff again became appeased, and made up his mind at once that he would tell Mary about the anchor as soon as things were smooth between them. "But if it had been some beautiful young lady out of another house,—one of them from the Park, for instance,—who hadn't been here a'most under my own thumb, I shouldn't 've minded it."
"The long and the short of it is, Mrs Baggett, that I am going to be married."
"I suppose you are, sir."
"And, as it happens, the lady I have selected happens to have been your mistress for the last two years."
"She won't be my missus no more," said Mrs Baggett, with an air of fixed determination.
"Of course you can do as you like about that. I can't compel any one to live in this house against her will; but I would compel you if I knew how, for your own benefit."
"There ain't no compelling."