“Suppose, for the coming year, you should place my brother Carl here as overseer? You have tested his skill and probity.”
This was a very unlucky proposition on Catherine’s part. He sat back in his chair, and looking at her in steady scorn, said—
“Yes, madam, I have ‘tested his skill and probity,’ and know so well the degree of the former, and the quality of the latter, that I have already forbid him to set foot on my premises or speak to my wife. Do you dare to think that I am your dupe, or his? And now, hear me: In all the directions that I have given you, I have simply desired or requested you to do this or that, but in this matter of your perfidious brother Carl, I command you to hold no intercourse with him whatever.”
“You shall be obeyed,” said Catherine, “you shall be obeyed,” and she thought—“Your simplest wish, expressed to that effect, would have had all the power of this arbitrary command,”—but she did not say it. She was never free of speech, least of all to him. And now he arose, as if to conclude the interview. And she recollected her promise to Henny, to intercede for Jack, and always more courageous in the cause of any, even the humblest, than in her own, she gently detained him, by saying—“I wished to speak to you about the servant you intend to take with you.”
“Jack?”
“Yes. You were not home last winter, and you do not know that he was sick with a cough the whole winter, and that he is consumptive.”
“I have sometimes thought so, however! Well?”
“Indeed I feel that it is properly no business of mine, and I beg you will excuse my interference. I would not willingly, I am sure—”
“To the point, if you please, Mrs. Clifton.”
“Well, I am afraid that if you take him, and expose him to the unavoidable hardships of campaign life, he will fall sick on your hands, and instead of being a help, be a hindrance. Therefore it is much more for your sake than for the boy’s own, that I should be pleased if you would leave him here and take another.”