'Nonsense!' he said impatiently. 'I promised Jerningham, and it is absurd to have you shutting yourself up for every old woman at Micklethwayte.'
Thereupon Ursula wiped away her tears, and stood up wrathful before him. 'I am not going,' she said.
'Oh, indeed!' he returned in a tone that made her still more angry. 'Hein'! a French ejaculation which he had the habit of uttering in a most exasperating manner.
'No,' she said. 'It is scarcely a place to which we even ought to be asked to go, and certainly not when—'
'Do you hear that, Mrs. Egremont?' he asked.
'Oh, Nuttie, Nuttie, dear!' she implored; 'don't.'
'No, mother,' said Nuttie, with flashing eyes; 'if you care so little for your best friends as to let yourself be dragged out among all sorts of gay, wicked people when your dear friend is lying dead, I'm sure I shan't go with you.'
Her father laughed a little. 'A pretty figure you are, to make a favour of accompanying us!'
'Oh, go away, go away, Nuttie,' entreated her mother. 'You don't know what you are saying.'
'I do know,' said Nuttie, exasperated perhaps by the contrast in the mirror opposite between her own swelled, disfigured face, and the soft tender one of her mother with the liquid eyes. 'I know how much you care for the dear friends who took care of us when we were forsaken!'