“My dear Mary—a convict’s daughter!”
“The poor girl was not consulted as to whose daughter she would like to be, Jack, and she is, without exception, the sweetest lassie I ever met.”
“Yes, she is nice,” said Otway. “Mother must have been nice too.”
“Is nice,” cried Mrs Otway, flushing. “I felt a little distant with her at first, but after what I have seen and know—by George, Jack, I do feel proud of our sex!”
“Humph!” ejaculated the Captain, with a smile at his wife’s bluff earnestness. “Yes, she’s a good woman; very ladylike, too. But that husband, that friend of his, Crellock! Poor creatures! it is ruining them.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Otway dryly. “That’s one of the misfortunes of marriage; we poor women are dragged down to the level of our husbands.”
“And when these husbands come out to convict settlements as gaolers they have to come with them, put up with all kinds of society, give up all their refinements, and make and mend their own dresses, and—”
“Even do their own chores, as the Americans call it,” said Mrs Otway, looking up smiling. “It makes me look very miserable, doesn’t it, Jack?”
She stopped her work, went behind her husband’s chair, put her arms round his neck, and laid her cheek upon his head.
Neither spoke for a few minutes, but the Captain looked very contented and happy, and neither of them heard the step as Bayle came through the house, and out suddenly into the verandah.