"Of course it would be a fine thing for him too."
"But I'd asked him if he knew of any land going cheap."
She shrugged her shoulders, and shrugged away the disinterestedness of all Orgreaves.
"Anyone could get the better of you," she said.
He resented this estimate of himself as a good-natured simpleton. He assuredly did not want to quarrel, but he was obliged to say:
"Oh! Could they?"
An acerbity scarcely intentional somehow entered into his tone. As soon as he heard it he recognised the tone as the forerunner of altercations.
"Of course!" she insisted, superiorly, and then went on: "We're all right as we are. We spend too much money, but I daresay we're all right. If you go in for a lot of new things you may lose all we've got, and then where shall we be?"
In his heart he said to her:
"What's it got to do with you? You manage your home, and I'll manage my business! You know nothing at all about business. You're the very antithesis of business. Whatever business you've ever had to do with you've ruined. You've no right to judge and no grounds for judgment. It's odious of you to asperse any of the Orgreaves. They were always your best friends. I should never have met you if it hadn't been for them. And where would you be now without me? Trying to run some wretched boarding-house and probably starving. Why do you assume that I'm a d----d fool? You always do. Let me tell you that I'm one of the most common-sense men in this town, and everybody knows it except you. Anyhow I was clever enough to get you out of a mess.... You knew I was hiding something from you, did you? I wish you wouldn't talk such infernal rot. And moreover I won't have you interfering in my business. Other wives don't, and you shan't. So let that be clearly understood." In his heart he was very ill-used and very savage.