“No good setting traps for me. I’ll hang in a cage in no man’s parlour. I must fly about in the woods like now—free!”
“Birds in the woods are sometimes hungry,” her wooer reminded her. “Suppose your business falls off—or things go to famine prices like five or six years ago. The gallon loaf ain’t always a shilling. Ten years ago I remember flour was two and ten the stone, and that only seconds, and tea was five shillings. With me you’d be sure of the fat of the land always—there’s no difference with me ’twixt Sundays and weekdays.”
“Oh, it’s a stuffed bird you want for your parlour.”
“Rubbish, I’ve got six stuffed birds in my parlour—in the loveliest glass cases!”
“But they don’t sing!” And Jinny burst mockingly into a song that had hitherto been a mere tune to her:
“I’ll be no submissive wife,
No, not I——”
He lost his temper. “Oh, you needn’t make such a fuss over yourself. I dare say I can find plenty of wives—with my connexion.”
“Among pigs?” she said sweetly. She jumped down and began to light the lamp. “This is your getting-out place.”
“It’s nothing of the sort—I go on to the bridge.”