"I'd sooner have her bills than herself," said Eames.
"My belief is, that she's been an ill-used woman," said Cradell. "If she had a husband that she could respect and have loved, and all that sort of thing, she would have been a charming woman."
"She's every bit as bad as he is," said Mrs. Roper.
"I can't agree with you, Mrs. Roper," continued the lady's champion. "Perhaps I ought to understand her position better than any one here, and—"
"Then that's just what you ought not to do, Mr. Cradell," said Mrs. Roper. And now the lady of the house spoke out her mind with much maternal dignity and with some feminine severity. "That's just what a young man like you has no business to know. What's a married woman like that to you, or you to her; or what have you to do with understanding her position? When you've a wife of your own, if ever you do have one, you'll find you'll have trouble enough then without anybody else interfering with you. Not but what I believe you're innocent as a lamb about Mrs. Lupex; that is, as far as any harm goes. But you've got yourself into all this trouble by meddling, and was like enough to get yourself choked upstairs by that man. And who's to wonder when you go on pretending to be in love with a woman in that way, and she old enough to be your mother? What would your mamma say if she saw you at it?"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Cradell.
"It's all very well your laughing, but I hate such folly. If I see a young man in love with a young woman, I respect him for it;" and then she looked at Johnny Eames. "I respect him for it,—even though he may now and then do things as he shouldn't. They most of 'em does that. But to see a young man like you, Mr. Cradell, dangling after an old married woman, who doesn't know how to behave herself; and all just because she lets him to do it;—ugh!—an old broomstick with a petticoat on would do just as well! It makes me sick to see it, and that's the truth of it. I don't call it manly; and it ain't manly, is it, Miss Spruce?"
"Of course I know nothing about it," said the lady to whom the appeal was thus made. "But a young gentleman should keep himself to himself till the time comes for him to speak out,—begging your pardon all the same, Mr. Cradell."
"I don't see what a married woman should want with any one after her but her own husband," said Amelia.
"And perhaps not always that," said John Eames.