"If I was to put my pipe out. Well, I won't. You'll take a glass of sherry, Lopez? Though I'm drinking spirits myself, I brought down a hamper of sherry wine. Oh, nonsense;—you must take something. That's right, Jane. Let us have the stuff and the glasses, and then they can do as they like." Lopez lit a cigar, and allowed his host to pour out for him a glass of "sherry wine," while Mrs. Lopez went into the house with Mrs. Parker and the children.
Mrs. Parker opened herself out to her new friend immediately. She hoped that they two might see "a deal of each other;—that is, if you don't think me too pushing." Sextus, she said, was so much away, coming down to Dovercourt only every other day! And then, within the half hour which was consumed by Lopez with his cigar, the poor woman got upon the general troubles of her life. Did Mrs. Lopez think that "all this speckelation was just the right thing?"
"I don't think that I know anything about it, Mrs. Parker."
"But you ought;—oughtn't you, now? Don't you think that a wife ought to know what it is that her husband is after;—specially if there's children? A good bit of the money was mine, Mrs. Lopez; and though I don't begrudge it, not one bit, if any good is to come out of it to him or them, a woman doesn't like what her father has given her should be made ducks and drakes of."
"But are they making ducks and drakes?"
"When he don't tell me I'm always afeard. And I'll tell you what I know just as well as two and two. When he comes home a little flustered, and then takes more than his regular allowance, he's been at something as don't quite satisfy him. He's never that way when he's done a good day's work at his regular business. He takes to the children then, and has one glass after his dinner, and tells me all about it,—down to the shillings and pence. But it's very seldom he's that way now."
"You may think it very odd, Mrs. Parker, but I don't in the least know what my husband is—in business."
"And you never ask?"
"I haven't been very long married, you know;—only about ten months."
"I'd had my fust by that time."