“He said he had been engaged to her for two or three years, and that as soon as his father left off cutting up rough—”
“Cutting up rough, Bill? Did he say cutting up rough?”
“Yes, Betsey. I never cut up rough in my business, never. I always made a point of having the best Sheffield knives and steels, and my steaks and chops and joints was always pictures.”
“Yes, dear; but tell me: Miss Thorne is engaged to be married to this gentleman?”
“I suppose so,” said Mr William Forth Burge drearily. “It was always so, Betsey. I could get on in trade, and I could save money, and I always dressed well, and I defy the world to say I wasn’t always clean shaved; but I never did see a young lady that I thought was nice, but somebody else had seen her before and thought the same.”
“Oh, but we never know what might happen, Bill.”
“What’s the good of being rich? What’s the good of having a fine house? What’s the good of everything, if everything’s always going to turn out disappointment? Betsey,” he continued fiercely, “that chap thinks of nothing but hisself. He’s one of your cigar-smoking, glass-o’-sherry chaps, and he ain’t got a good ’art. Why, if you’d got a young man, Betsey, and he come and sit down here and talked about you as that chap did about our young schoolmistress, I’d ha’ punched his head!”
Miss Burge pressed her brother softly back into a chair, and patted his face, and smoothed his hair, and kissed him first on one cheek and then upon the other.
“You’re tired, Bill dear,” she said, “and didn’t get your nap after dinner. Where’s your handkerchief? Here, let me do it dear;” and taking her brother’s flaming handkerchief from his pocket, she softly opened it over his head and face as if she were about to perform a conjuring trick and bring out bowls of gold fish or something of the kind from beneath, but she did not: she merely left it on his head and went away on tiptoe, saying to herself:
“Poor Bill! he has got it again, and badly, too.”