“Oh, Caudle! How can you ask? Poor things! weren’t they all in their thick merinos and beaver bonnets? What do you say? -
“What of it?
“What! you’ll tell me that you didn’t see how the Briggs’s girls, in their new chips, turned their noses up at ’em? And you didn’t see how the Browns looked at the Smiths, and then at our dear girls, as much as to say, ‘Poor creatures! what figures for the month of May!’
“You didn’t see it?
“The more shame for you - you would, if you’d had the feelings of a parent - but I’m sorry to say, Caudle, you haven’t. I’m sure those Briggs’s girls - the little minxes! - put me into such a pucker, I could have pulled their ears for ’em over the pew. What do you say?
“I ought to be ashamed of myself to own it?
“No, Mr. Caudle; the shame lies with you, that don’t let your children appear at church like other people’s children, that make ’em uncomfortable at their devotions, poor things! for how can it be otherwise, when they see themselves dressed like nobody else?
“Now, Caudle, it’s no use talking; those children shall not cross the threshold next Sunday, if they haven’t things for the summer. Now mind - they sha’n’t; and there’s an end of it. I won’t have ’em exposed to the Briggs’s and the Browns again: no, they shall know they have a mother, if they’ve no father to feel for ’em. What do you say, Caudle?
“A good deal I must think of church, if I think so much of what we go in?
“I only wish you thought as much as I do, you’d be a better man than you are, Caudle, I can tell you; but that’s nothing to do with it. I’m talking about decent clothes for the children for the summer, and you want to put me off with something about the church; but that’s so like you, Caudle!