"Don't you know I'm liable to have you discharged for impudence?"
"You can't discharge me, for I've already discharged myself. I'd rather starve than serve one more day at your horrid old Hands."
"Horrid old Hands, eh? I can keep you from getting a job in any other store."
"I don't want one. I've had enough of stores. I am not afraid of anything you can do, Mr. Rolls. Though they do call you 'Saint Peter' behind your back—meaning just the opposite—you haven't the keys of heaven."
"You're an impudent young hussy."
"Perhaps. But you deserve impudence. You deserve worse, sir. A moment ago I hated you. I—think I could have killed you. But—but now I can't help admiring something big in you, that makes you defend your son in spite of yourself, when it was policy to let me loathe him."
"'Loathe' is no word to use for my boy," the old man caught her up again. "I don't want you to marry him, no! But, whatever happens, I can't have you or any one else doing him black injustice."
"
Then, 'whatever happens,' I'll admit to you that never in the bottom of my heart did I believe those things. I didn't believe them to-day, but I—you were so horrible—I had to be horrible, too. There! The same motive that made you defend him against your own interest has made me confess that to you now. But you needn't be afraid. I don't think in any case I could have married him knowing how his—his family would feel. Still I might, if he'd tried to persuade me; I can't be sure. I might have been weak. As it is, though—after you've insulted me in this cruel way, I believe nothing would induce me to say yes if he asked me. And he never has asked me."
"Never has asked you?" echoed Peter senior, dumbfounded.