"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Biddlecombe, thinking of the builder and contractor.
Quinney pulled himself together, sitting upright in the arm-chair and speaking firmly.
"I ain't here to talk about him. Less said on that subject the better. I'm my own master now, ma'am, able to please myself. Lord! How he hated my coming here!"
"I know, I know!"
"Never appreciated Susan, neither. Dessay you think I ought to be at home, mourning. Well, he knocked all that out o' me long ago. Plain talk is best. As a matter of business, with an eye on some of our customers in this stoopid old town, I shall do what is expected in the way of a tombstone, and I shall try not to sing and dance in High Street, but between you and me it's a riddance."
Mrs. Biddlecombe smiled uneasily, but she said honestly:
"I've been through it, Mr. Quinney."
"You've had the doose of a time, ma'am—and a born lady, too."
Mrs. Biddlecombe put her handkerchief to her eyes, and dabbed them gently. She did not quite understand her visitor, who was presenting himself in a new and startling light, but she was comfortably aware that his own inclination and nothing else had brought him to Laburnum Row. For a moment her mind was a welter of confused excitements and speculations. Would her Susie rise to this momentous occasion? Would she clasp opportunity to her pretty bosom? And if so, what might not be done with such clay as Quinney, plastic to the hand of an experienced potter. Nevertheless, the young man's too brutal declaration of independence shocked cherished conventions. She beheld him shrinkingly as an iconoclast, a shatterer of the sacred Fifth Commandment.
"Are you thinking of leaving Melchester?" she asked.