"Well, now, the fact is I did not get a chance, for you walked off home so early. I was just beginning to tell you while we were in the garden, but before I could get it out we were asked to go in to dance, and there was no other opportunity to speak to you quietly."
"Well, you've lost your chance then. If you had told me I might have been able to talk the Mater over and bring her round to let you stay there, if it was your fancy to be a shopman and advertise the fact to everybody. But, now—well, my Lady Mary is simply raving over it, and she declares she will not have our family name disgraced on her own door-step!"
Arthur laughed mockingly. "Our family name!" he repeated. "How long have you been a Murray? Thomas Wilkins, your father, was not a Murray, but Wilkins, a retired pork butcher or sausage-maker or pork-pie manufacturer. You may not remember it, I dare say, but my father knew all about it, and so do a good many other people."
"I don't care who knows it! I have a perfect right to the name of Murray. Lady Mary took care of that for me, as she has taken care of most things, or she wouldn't be as rich now as she is."
"Nobody disputes her riches," said Arthur, "but money is not everything, and I should like to know how she is going to drive me out of the town, if I don't choose to go. Fairmead suits me very well, and I am not at all sure that it will please me to go anywhere else, and you may tell her ladyship what I say if you like."
"Don't be a fool! Don't you know that my mother could crush you all as easily as I could crush a moth. Ah! and she'll do it, too, if you cross her in this. I tell you none of her family has ever been engaged in trade—"
"Except your father, and perhaps he had done with the pies and sausages before you were born," interrupted Arthur, still in the same mocking tone.
"Well, if you will be a fool, and not only scorch yourself, but put the rest of them at home in the fire, why, you must do it, I suppose. I cannot help you any more. I cannot help myself. When the Mater has set her heart upon a thing, you may bet she'll have it somehow, by hook or by crook, and it's no good standing out against her."
"I see. That's where the shoe pinches, and you want to frighten me with the same story. What is it now, old fellow?" said Arthur in a half-pitying, half-bantering tone. "It is easy to see my lady has been sitting upon you over something. What's the row?"
"Well, I'm going to Oxford after all, almost at the Mater's price! I didn't mean to give in for less than another hundred a year, but she says if I don't go, she will move to Dublin and make her home at Lismore with the old Earl of Duncarron and Lady Bridget, and I have had enough of that to last me a lifetime. Besides, she is kicking up no end of a row down at your place about a letter the post office have lost; and I hate rows, and since this began, there's no peace for anybody. So I'm off at the end of this week, and if you know what's good for yourself, you'll be off too, and serve reels of cotton at some other shop than old Brading's. Shall I tell the Mater you're going?"