"I do so wish he would," said Cherry, "and let us all go and live at Torquay. I do so hate this nasty dirty old place."
"I shall never live in a house I like so well," said Martha.
"The house is well enough, my dears, and so is the brewery, but it can't be expected that your father should go on working for ever as he does at present. It's too much for his strength;—a great deal too much. I can see it, though I don't suppose any one else can. No one knows, only me, what your father has gone through in that brewery."
"But why doesn't he take Mr. Rowan's offer?" said Cherry.
"Everybody seems to say now that Rowan is ever so rich," said Augusta.
"I suppose papa doesn't like the feeling of being turned out," said Martha.
"He wouldn't be turned out, my dear; not the least in the world," said Mrs. Tappitt. "I don't choose to interfere much myself because, perhaps, I don't understand it; but certainly I should like your papa to retire. I have told him so; but gentlemen sometimes don't like to be told of things."
Mrs. Tappitt could be very severe to her husband, could say to him terrible words if her spirit were put up, as she herself was wont to say. But she understood that it did not become her to speak ill of their father before her girls. Nor would she willingly have been heard by the servants to scold their master. And though she said terrible things she said them with a conviction that they would not have any terrible effect. Tappitt would only take them for what they were worth, and would measure them by the standard which his old experience had taught him to adopt. When a man has been long consuming red pepper, it takes much red pepper to stimulate his palate. Had Mrs. Tappitt merely advised her husband, in proper conjugal phraseology, to relinquish his trade and to retire to Torquay, her advice, she knew, would have had no weight. She was eager on the subject, feeling convinced that this plan of retirement was for the good of the family generally, and therefore she had advocated it with energy. There may be those who think that a wife goes too far in threatening a husband with a commission of lunacy, and frightening him with a prospect of various fatal diseases; but the dose must be adapted to the constitution, and the palate that is accustomed to large quantities of red pepper must have quantities larger than usual whenever some special culinary effect is to be achieved. On the present occasion Mrs. Tappitt went on talking to the girls of their father in language that was quite eulogistic. No threat against the absent brewer passed her mouth,—or theirs. But they all understood each other, and were agreed that everything was to be done to induce papa to accept Mr. Rowan's offer.
"Then," said Cherry, "he'll marry Rachel Ray, and she'll be mistress of the brewery house."
"Never!" said Mrs. Tappitt, very solemnly. "Never! He'll never be such a fool as that."