"Well, mother?"
"Your father is an idiot."
"Mother, mother! I dissent from the opinion, and if it were true, it comes with the worst possible grace from you, but I am sick at heart. I pray you to spare me reproaches or angry words, mother."
"Haity taity, one must not speak next, I suppose. Some people fancy that other people know nothing, but there is such a thing as overhearing what some people say to other people."
Johanna had not the most remote notion of what her mother meant, but Mrs. Oakley's tongue was like many pieces of machinery, that when once set in motion are not without considerable trouble brought to a standstill again, so on she went.
"Of course. I now know quite well why the godly man who would have made you a chosen vessel was refused. It was all owing to that scamp, Mark Ingestrie."
"Mother!"
"Marry come up! you need not look at me in such a way. We don't all of us see with the same eyes. A scamp he is, and a scamp he will be."
"Mother, he whom you so name is with his God. Mention him no more. The wild ocean rolls over his body—his soul is in heaven. Speak not irreverently of one whose sole crime was that he loved me. Oh, mother, mother, you—"
Johanna could say no more, she burst into tears.