‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course not. But let me assure you that people sometimes think of other things besides making profit when they get married. It’s a pity that you always show yourself so coarse-minded.’
Joseph was quite serious in administering this rebuke. He really felt himself justified in holding the tone of moral superiority. The same phenomenon has often been remarked in persons conscious that their affairs are prospering, and whose temptations to paltry meanness are on that account less frequent.
‘And what about yourself?’ asked his wife, having found her retort at length. ‘Why did you want to marry me, I’d like to know?’
‘Why? You are getting too modest. How could I live in the same house with such a good-looking and sweet-tempered and well-behaved—’
‘Oh, shut up!’ she exclaimed, in a voice such as one hears at the street-corner. ‘It was just because you thought we was goin’ to be fools enough to keep you in idleness. Who was the fool, after all?’
Joseph smiled, and returned to his newspaper. In satisfaction at having reduced him to silence, Clem laughed aloud and clattered with the knife on her plate. As she was doing so there came a knock at the door.
‘A gentleman wants to know if you’re in, sir,’ said the house-thrall, showing a smeary face. ‘Mr. Byass is the name.’
‘Mr. Byass? I’ll go down and see him.’
Clem’s face became alive with suspicion. In spite of her careless attire she intercepted Joseph, and bade the servant ask Mr. Byass to come upstairs. ‘How can you go down without a collar?’ she said to her husband.