“Oh! beg pardon; that is what we call him in the room. He has got such a curious laugh.”
“Oh! I know the gent. He is a retired doctor. I wish he'd laugh less and buy more: and HE gave you five pounds towards the young gentleman's arm-chair! Well, I should as soon have expected blood from a flint. You have got five pounds to pay, sir: so now the chair will cost your mamma ten shillings. Give him the order and the change, Mr. Jones.”
Christopher and Rosa talked this over in the room whilst the men were looking out their purchases. “Come,” said Rosa; “now I forgive him sneering at me; his heart is not really hard, you see.” Staines, on the contrary, was very angry. “What!” he cried, “pity a boy who made one bad bargain, that, after all, was not a very bad bargain; and he had no kindness, nor even common humanity, for my beautiful Rosa, inexperienced as a child, and buying for her husband, like a good, affectionate, honest creature, amongst a lot of sharpers and hard-hearted cynics—like himself.”
“It WAS cruel of him,” said Rosa, altering her mind in a moment, and half inclined to cry.
This made Christopher furious. “The ill-natured, crotchety, old—the fact is, he is a misogynist.”
“Oh, the wretch!” said Rosa warmly. “And what is that?”
“A woman-hater.”
“Oh! is that all? Why, so do I—after that Florence Cole. Women are mean, heartless things. Give me men; they are loyal and true.”
“All of them?” inquired Christopher, a little satirically. “Read the papers.”
“Every soul of them,” said Mrs. Staines, passing loftily over the proposed test. “That is, all the ones I care about; and that is my own, own one.”