"Mr. Dick," said my aunt, triumphantly, "give me your hand, for your common sense is invaluable."
Having shaken it with great cordiality, she pulled me towards her, and said to Mr. Murdstone:
"You can go when you like; I'll take my chance with the boy. If he's all you say he is, at least I can do as much for him then as you have done. But I don't believe a word of it."
"Miss Trotwood," rejoined Mr. Murdstone, shrugging his shoulders, as he rose, "if you were a gentleman—"
"Bah! stuff and nonsense!" said my aunt. "Don't talk to me!"
"How exquisitely polite!" exclaimed Miss Murdstone, rising. "Overpowering, really!"
"Do you think I don't know," said my aunt, turning a deaf ear to the sister, and continuing to address the brother, and to shake her head at him, "what kind of life you must have led that poor, little woman you cajoled into marrying you? Do you think I don't know what a woeful day it was for her and her boy when you first came in her way?"
And thereupon she read him such a lecture as I warrant he had never listened to before in his life, nor ever would again. He bit his lip in silence while she lectured, and all the color left his face. Miss Murdstone tried to interrupt the flow of words repeatedly, with no success at all. When she had ended—
"Good day, sir," said my aunt, "and good-bye! Good day to you, too, ma'am," turning suddenly upon his sister. "Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I'll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!"
It would require a painter, and no common painter too, to depict my aunt's face as she delivered herself of this very unexpected sentiment, and Miss Murdstone's face as she heard it. But the manner of the speech, no less than the matter, was so fiery, that Miss Murdstone, without a word in answer, discreetly put her arm through her brother's, and walked haughtily out of the cottage; my aunt remaining in the window looking after them, prepared, I have no doubt, to carry her threat into instant execution.