The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then resuming her address, to which Ardworth listened with a half-frown and a half-smile, observed encouragingly,—
“Yes, there’s nothing like a lawful wife to break a man in, as you will find some day. Howsomever, your time’s not come for the altar, so suppose you give Helen your arm, and come with us.”
“Do,” said Helen, in a sweet, coaxing voice.
Ardworth bent down his rough, earnest face to Helen’s, and an evident pleasure relaxed its thoughtful lines. “I cannot resist you,” he began, and then he paused and frowned. “Pish!” he added, “I was talking folly; but what head would not you turn? Resist you I must, for I am on my way now to my drudgery. Ask me anything some years hence, when I have time to be happy, and then see if I am the bear you now call me.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Mivers, emphatically, “are you coming, or are you not? Don’t stand there shilly-shally.”
“Mrs. Mivers,” returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly humour, “I am sure you would be very angry with your husband’s excellent shopmen if that was the way they spoke to your customers. If some unhappy dropper-in,—some lady who came to buy a yard or so of Irish,—was suddenly dazzled, as I am, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly coveted,—a splendid lace veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever else you ladies desiderate,—and while she was balancing between prudence and temptation, your foreman exclaimed: `Don’t stand shilly-shally’—come, I put it to you.”
“Stuff!” said Mrs. Mivers.
“Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, for the sake of your till), prudence gets the better of me; unless,” added Ardworth, irresolutely, and glancing at Helen,—“unless, indeed, you are not sufficiently protected, and—”
“Purtected!” exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone of astonishment, and agitating the formidable umbrella; “as if I was not enough, with the help of this here domestic commodity, to purtect a dozen such. Purtected, indeed!”
“John is right, Mrs. M.,—business is business,” said Mr. Mivers. “Let us move on; we stop the way, and those idle lads are listening to us, and sniggering.”