“I wish to see it, Richard, because I suspect that the name of my Cousin Jack Stilwell is upon it.”
“Oh, mother!” cried Alice, who had been listening in surprise to the conversation, suddenly starting to her feet; “you don't mean that they have pressed Jack to be a soldier.”
“Leave the room, Alice,” her father said angrily. “This is no concern of a child like you.” When the door closed behind the girl he said to his wife:
“Naturally his name is in the list. I selected fifty of the most worthless fellows in Southampton, and his name was the first which occurred to me. What then?”
“Then I tell you, Richard,” Dame Anthony said, rising, “that you are a wretch, a mean, cowardly, cruel wretch. You have vented your spite upon Jack, whom I love as if he were my own son, because he would not put up with the tyranny of your foreman and yourself. You may be Mayor of Southampton, you may be a great man in your own way, but I call you a mean, pitiful fellow. I won't stay in the house with you an hour longer. The wagon for Basingstoke comes past at three o'clock, and I shall go and stay with my father and mother there, and take Alice with me.”
“I forbid you to do anything of the sort,” the mayor said pompously.
“You forbid!” Dame Anthony cried. “What do I care for your forbidding? If you say a word I will go down the town and join those who pelted you with mud last night. A nice spectacle it would be for the worthy Mayor of Southampton to be pelted in the street by a lot of women led by his own wife. You know me, Richard. You know when I say I will do a thing I will do it.”
“I will lock you up in your own room, woman.”
“You won't,” Dame Anthony said scornfully. “I would scream out of the window till I brought the whole town round. No, Mr. Mayor. You have had your own way, and I am going to have mine. Go and tell the town if you like that your wife has left you because you kidnapped her cousin, the boy she loved. You tell your story and I will tell mine. Why, the women in the town would hoot you, and you wouldn't dare show your face in the streets. You insist, indeed! Why, you miserable little man, my fingers are tingling now. Say another word to me and I will box your ears till you won't know whether you are standing on your head or your heels.”
The mayor was a small man, while Dame Anthony, although not above the usual height, was plump and strong; and her crestfallen spouse felt that she was capable of carrying her threat into execution. He therefore thought it prudent to make no reply, and his angry wife swept from the room.