"What an infatuation!" sighed Mrs. Dobbs, pursuing her own meditations. "To think of Susy throwing herself away on that extravagant, selfish, good-for-nothing fellow without any principles to speak of, when she might have had an honest tradesman in a first-rate way of business! She had only to pick and choose."
"Humph! Honest tradesmen are not as plentiful as blackberries, though," observed Mr. Weatherhead, reflectively.
Mrs. Dobbs ignored this parenthesis, and went on: "It was a bad day for me and mine when he first came swaggering into this house."
From which speech it will be seen that the Dobbs side of the family coincided with the Cheffingtons in considering Augustus's to have been an unfortunate marriage; only each party arrived at the same conclusion by a different road.
"Have you heard from him lately, Sarah?" asked Mr. Weatherhead, after a pause.
"From my precious son-in-law? Not I!"
"Oh!"
"Not a word from him till he wants something. You may take your oath of that, Jo Weatherhead."
"Oh, I thought you might have heard from him, because——"
"Well?" (very sharply).