“Wrong! well, yes, I suppose so,” said Jared; “if it’s wrong to get rich, it was wrong of him to talk to our poor girl in the way he did; and it’s wrong of her to dream of it, if she still does, and it was wrong of you to expect that anything would ever come of it but sorrow, and it was wrong—”
“Wrong of you to go on talking in that way,” said Mrs Jared, impetuously; “and, for my part, I don’t believe that it is as you say. There’s some misfortune or something happened to him, or—”
“Don’t, for goodness’ sake, talk in that way to her,” said Jared, “or you’ll complete the mischief. It’s as well as it is, and the sooner she forgets it all, the better. Nothing could ever have come of it, and I should never have given my consent, even if he had kept to his professed determination. Richard would always have been against it; and, goodness knows, there’s estrangement enough between us without our doing anything to increase the distance. Look at us: poor people, with poor-people friends,—old Purkis and Tim Ruggles, and those aristocrats in Decadia; and then look at Richard and his—”
“Richard’s a selfish—”
“Hush! don’t, please, dear,” said Jared, with a pained look; and he laid his hand gently upon his wife’s lips, when, smoothing her forehead, she exclaimed—
“Well, I won’t then; but it does make me angry when I think of his money, and then of how poor we are, while somehow the poorer we get, the more tiresome the children grow. You’ve no conception how cross they are at times.”
“Haven’t I?” said Jared, drily.
“No,” said Mrs Jared, impetuously; “how can you have?”
“Did you wash the little ones this morning, my dear?” said Jared.
“Wash them! Why, of course; at least Patty did, the same as usual.”