The visitor did not condescend to reply until the door was shut, when, folding her arms, she stood looking at him with a fierce uncompromising aspect.
“I’ve come about that poor girl,” she said at last.
“About what poor girl?” said Tom Brough.
“That poor girl whose heart’s being broken up into tiny bits by you and him—her father,” cried Keziah, fiercely, “and I’ve come to know if you ain’t ashamed of yourself. There, hold your tongue, and listen to what I’ve got to say; I haven’t said anything to him at home, because it’s like talking to stone and marbles. But I’ve come to talk to you.”
“Talk away, then,” said Tom Brough, pleasantly.
“I’m going to,” said Keziah, angrily, “and don’t you think, Mr Brough, that you’re going to get rid of me like that, because you are not, so now then. This marriage can’t go on.”
“Why not?” said Tom Brough, offering a glass of wine, which was refused.
“Because I’m not going to see my darling that I’ve nursed and tended ever since she was a baby driven into her grave to please you. There, keep off—gracious, if the man isn’t mad!”
Keziah half shrieked the last words, for, leaping from his seat, Tom Brough made a rush at her, chased her round the table with an activity hardly to have been expected from one of his years, followed her out on to the landing as she hastily beat a retreat, down the stairs, along the passage, and caught her on the door-mat, where, after a sharp scuffle, he succeeded in imprinting a couple of sounding kisses upon her cheek before she got the door open, and, panting and tumbled, rushed out nearly to the oversetting of Peter Pash, who, with his eye to the keyhole, had seen the chase in part, heard the scuffle in full, and now stood gazing grandly at the panting object of his affections.
“Keziah!” he exclaimed at length, “I thought better of you.”