“Pretty? Did you say pretty?”
Dick nodded.
“Look as if they were fixed there as handles to open his mouth with, or to steer him. I don’t like that boy. You, Jessie, if you let that chap make love to you—Heyday, what’s the matter now?”
The matter was that Jessie had darted an indignant look at him and gone upstairs to her bedroom.
“Look at that now!” said Hopper.
“Well, you shouldn’t speak to her like that,” said Mrs Shingle indignantly.
“Oh, if it’s coming to pride, I’m off,” said Hopper.
“This is getting on in the world.” And, laying down his pipe, he prepared to go.
“No, no, no—what nonsense!” cried Dick and his wife. And together they forced the old fellow back into his chair, where, becoming somewhat mollified after another glass of whiskey and water, he began to talk.
“She oughtn’t to have huffed off like that,” he said. “But I like Jessie: she’s a sensible girl, wears her own hair, and doesn’t turn her boot-heels into stilts and walk like a hen going to peck the ground with her beak; though how she expects to get on without being more fashionable I don’t know. Ah! it’s a strange world, but it’s a great nuisance that we shall all have to die some day. Max won’t mind it a bit,” he chuckled, “he’s such a good man.”