"I know her well, a big hat and no morals, a bankrupt's baggage."
"And the night after she 'wants to go to the theatre, ma.'"
"Dens of infamy," said he. "If I had my way I'd shut them all up and put the actors in gaol, with their hamleting and gamyacting and ha-ha'ing out of them."
"I can't keep her in," said his wife, wringing her hands, "and I won't try to any longer. I get a headache when I talk to her, so I do. Last night when I mentioned about her going out with that Rorke man she turned round as cool as you please and told me 'to shut up.' Her own mother!" and she surveyed Providence with a condemnatory eye—
At this point her husband swung his long arm and arrested the slice of bread in his wife's lap—
"If she spoke to me that way," he grinned, "I'll bet I'd astonish her."
His wife looked in amazement from her lap to his plate, but she had ability for only one quarrel at a time—
"And doesn't she talk to you like that? You never say a word to her but she has a look in her eye that's next door to calling you a fool.—I don't know where she is at all to-day."
"What time did she go out?"
"After breakfast this morning."