“It will not annoy you long, Mary,” said her husband: “I can pay no more rent; and I only wonder they have not been here already to take the week.”
“And where are we to go?” said the wife.
“To a place which certainly the sun never touches,” said her husband, with a kind of malice in his misery,—“to a cellar!”
“Oh! why was I ever born!” exclaimed his wife. “And yet I was so happy once! And it is not our fault. I cannot make it out Warner, why you should not get two pounds a-week like Walter Gerard?”
“Bah!” said the husband.
“You said he had no family,” continued his wife. “I thought he had a daughter.”
“But she is no burthen to him. The sister of Mr Trafford is the Superior of the convent here, and she took Sybil when her mother died, and brought her up.”
“Oh! then she is a nun?”
“Not yet; but I dare say it will end in it.”
“Well, I think I would even sooner starve,” said his wife, “than my children should be nuns.”