Her calm insistence maddened him. Jumping up from his chair, he stamped out of the room, and she heard him strike a match in his office. Presently he returned, and threw angrily on to the table in front of her a cheque-book and pass-book. The deposit-book she had always kept herself for convenience of paying into the bank.
'Here,' he said scornfully, 'tak' thy traps and ne'er speak to me again. I wash my hands of ye. Tak' 'em and do what ye'n a mind. Chuck thy money into th' cut[[1]] for aught I care.'
The next evening Henry came up. She observed that his face had a grave look, but intent on her own difficulties she did not remark on it, and proceeded at once to do what she resolved to do. It was a cold night in November, yet the miser, wrathfully sullen, chose to sit in his office without a fire. Agnes was working sums in the kitchen.
'Henry,' Anna began, 'I've had a difficulty with father, and I must tell you.'
'Not about the wedding, I hope,' he said.
'It was about money. Of course, Henry, I can't get married without a lot of money.'
'Why not?' he inquired.
'I've my own things to get,' she said, 'and I've all the house-linen to buy.'
'Oh! You buy the house-linen, do you?' She saw that he was relieved by that information.
'Of course. Well, I told father I must have a hundred pounds, and he wouldn't give it me. And when I stuck to him he got angry—you know he can't bear to see money spent—and at last he get a little savage and gave me my bank-books, and said he'd have nothing more to do with my money.'