“This gentleman is called Bradshaw,” said Walter, to Tom’s annoyance.
“Is ’e?” she said. “’A ’ate th’ ’epplestalls.” It might have been a password, and Tom thought she had the intention, in speaking it, to curry favor with a rich relation, but as it happened Mary Ellen was sincere. She did not say she hated the Hepplestalls to please Tom Bradshaw. She said it because it was true.
Tom certainly wasn’t pleased. He reached for his hat. “I’m off out of this,” he said, and when Walter looked at him with surprise, “Man,” he said, “it’s beyond all to find that old ghost jibbering at me when I’ve sweated blood to lay it. You do not hate the Hepplestalls,” he roared at Mary Ellen. “They’re decent folk and you’re mud.”
“Aye,” she said submissively. That she was mud, at any rate, was not news to her.
“Aye, what?”
“What yo’ said.”
“Come,” said Walter. “There’s tractability.”
“I call it cunning. Beggar’s cunning. She’s a Bradshaw.”
“Not to me. She’s a Voice, and, by the Lord, I’ll train her how to use it.”
“What are you going to do, Walter?” Tom put his hat down, feeling that it was ungenerous to leave his friend in the grip of a mistaken impulse.