"And what if nothing to suit your opinions can be found, father?" asked his wife.
"Then—then she'll be forced to stop here, I'm afraid, my dear."
"And what if I said I wouldn't if she did?" flashed out Jane.
"There's some questions beneath answering, Jane, and that's one of them," replied Mr. Bamsey.
In the pause that followed, Mr. Chaffe, who had been smoking in the chimney corner of the house-place where they sat, addressed the family.
Jane, however, did not stop to listen. She began to remove the supper things and came and went.
"Ben's so right as he can be in my opinion, and if you think, you'll see he's right, Faith," said Arthur. "He founds what he says upon the fact that Dinah has done the proper thing to give John up; and if you could only see that, instead of blaming her and thinking hardly of her for so doing, you'd admit she was not to be punished for what she done. We all make mistakes, and though I don't know nothing about love from personal experience, I've seen it working in the world, for good or ill, these fifty years very near. And a tricky thing it is, and Dinah ain't the first that thought she was in love when she wasn't, and won't be the last. There's some would have gone on with it and married Johnny just the same, for one reason and another; but in my humble judgment a girl who can marry a man she doesn't love, for any reason, be little better than a scarlet woman. And when Dinah found there weren't love on both sides, very properly she owned up and said so."
Faith Bamsey listened quietly.
"I've pretty well come to that myself, Arthur," she said. "I may say I go that far now. It was a burning shame, of course, as Dinah couldn't make up her mind months and months ago; but when I tell her that, she says she didn't know her mind. And so not a word against her. She's a saint and worthy of all praise, and I dare say we ought to kiss her feet and bless her. But what next? That's all I humbly want to know? Ben, you see, is very jealous indeed for Dinah; but, on the other side, I like John to be free to come and go from his mother's home; and you won't say that's unnatural. But while she's here, angel though she may be, come John can't; and that's not unnatural either."
She smouldered bitterly under her level speech and self-control.