He was guiltless of any intended cruelty, and Dahlia's first impulse when she had got her breath, was to soothe him. She took his hand. “Dear father! poor father! Dear, dear father!” she kept saying.
“Rhoda don't think it,” Anthony assured her.
“No?” and Dahlia's bosom exulted up to higher pain.
“Rhoda declares you are married. To hear that gal fight for you—there's ne'er a one in Wrexby dares so much as hint a word within a mile of her.”
“My Rhoda! my sister!” Dahlia gasped, and the tears came pouring down her face.
In vain Anthony lifted her tea-cup and the muffin-plate to her for consolation. His hushings and soothings were louder than her weeping. Incapable of resisting such a protest of innocence, he said, “And I don't think it, neither.”
She pressed his fingers, and begged him to pay the people of the shop: at which sign of her being probably moneyless, Anthony could not help mumbling, “Though I can't make out about your husband, and why he lets ye be cropped—that he can't help, may be—but lets ye go about dressed like a mill'ner gal, and not afford cabs. Is he very poor?”
She bowed her head.
“Poor?”
“He is very poor.”