"She keeps lodgings;—a very decent sort of a woman I should say."
"She won't let the Baro-nite come there?"
"Certainly not," said Roger, who felt that he was hardly dealing sincerely with this most sincere of mealmen. Hitherto he had shuffled off every question that had been asked him about Felix, though he knew that Ruby had spent many hours with her fashionable lover. "Mrs. Pipkin won't let him come there."
"If I was to give her a ge'own now,—or a blue cloak;—them lodging-house women is mostly hard put to it;—or a chest of drawers like, for her best bedroom, wouldn't that make her more o' my side, squoire?"
"I think she'll try to do her duty without that."
"They do like things the like o' that; any ways I'll go up, squoire, arter Sax'nam market, and see how things is lying."
"I wouldn't go just yet, Mr. Crumb, if I were you. She hasn't forgotten the scene at the farm yet."
"I said nothing as warn't as kind as kind."
"But her own perversity runs in her own head. If you had been unkind she could have forgiven that; but as you were good-natured and she was cross, she can't forgive that." John Crumb again scratched his head, and felt that the depths of a woman's character required more gauging than he had yet given to it. "And to tell you the truth, my friend, I think that a little hardship up at Mrs. Pipkin's will do her good."
"Don't she have a bellyful o' vittels?" asked John Crumb, with intense anxiety.