"I don't want to be a lady; no more than I am just by myself, like. If I can't be a lady without being made one, I won't be a lady at all."
"You be blowed."
"There are different kinds of ladies, father. I want to be such a one as neither you nor mother shall ever have cause to say I didn't behave myself."
"You'd talk the figures off a milestone," said Mr. Neefit, as he returned to his arm-chair, to his gin-and-water, to his growlings, and before long to his slumbers. Throughout the whole evening he was very unpleasant in the bosom of his family,—which consisted on this occasion of his wife only, as Polly took the opportunity of going out to drink tea with a young lady friend. Neefit, when he heard this, suggested that Ontario was drinking tea at the same house, and would have pursued his daughter but for mingled protestations and menaces which his wife used for preventing such a violation of parental authority. "Moggs don't know from Adam where she is; and you never knowed her do anything of that kind. And you'll go about with your mad schemes and jealousies till you about ruin the poor girl; that's what you will. I won't have it. If you go, I'll go too, and I'll shame you. No; you shan't have your hat. Of course she'll be off some day, if you make the place that wretched that she can't live in it. I know I would,—with the fust man as'd ask me." By these objurgations, by a pertinacious refusal as to his hat, and a little yielding in the matter of gin-and-water, Mr. Neefit was at length persuaded to remain at home.
On the following morning he said nothing before he left home, but as soon as he had opened his letters and spoken a few sharp things to the two men in Conduit Street, he went off to Mr. Moggs senior. Of the interview between Mr. Neefit and Mr. Moggs senior sufficient has already been told. Then it was, after his return to his own shop, that he so behaved as to drive the German artist into downright mutiny and unlimited beer. Through the whole afternoon he snarled at Waddle; but Waddle sat silent, bending over the ledger. One question Waddle did answer.
"Where's that pig-headed German gone?" asked Mr. Neefit for the tenth time.
"I believe he's cutting his throat about this time," said Mr. Waddle.
"He may wait till I come and sew it up," said the breeches-maker.
All this time Mr. Neefit was very unhappy. He knew, as well as did Mr. Waddle or Polly, that he was misbehaving himself. He was by no means deficient in ideas of duty to his wife, to his daughter, and to his dependents. Polly was the apple of his eye; his one jewel;—in his estimation the best girl that ever lived. He admired her in all her moods, even though she would sometimes oppose his wishes with invincible obstinacy. He knew in his heart that were she to marry Ontario Moggs he would forgive her on the day of her marriage. He could not keep himself from forgiving her though she were to marry a chimney-sweep. But, as he thought, a great wrong was being done him. He could not bring himself to believe that Polly would not marry the young Squire, if the young Squire would only be true to his undertaking; and then he could not endure that the young Squire should escape from him, after having been, as it were, saved from ruin by his money, without paying for the accommodation in some shape. He had some inkling of an idea that in punishing Ralph by making public the whole transaction, he would be injuring his daughter as much as he injured Ralph. But the inkling did not sufficiently establish itself in his mind to cause him to desist. Ralph Newton ought to be made to repeat his offer before all the world; even though he should only repeat it to be again refused. The whole of that evening he sat brooding over it, so that he might come to some great resolution.