“He starves himself for your sake.”
“And I have starved for his whim,” he said, taking up another piece.
“All he has in the world is for you,” she pleaded.
“Yes, if I come here to sit on it like a dam’ toad in a hole. Thank you; and what about the shovel, eh? He always had a queer way of showing his love.”
“I could bring him round in a week,” she suggested, timidly.
He was too hungry to answer her; and, holding the plate submissively to his hand, she began to whisper up to him in a quick, panting voice. He listened, amazed, eating slower and slower, till at last his jaws stopped altogether. “That’s his game, is it?” he said, in a rising tone of scathing contempt. An ungovernable movement of his arm sent the plate flying out of her fingers. He shot out a violent curse.
She shrank from him, putting her hand against the wall.
“No!” he raged. “He expects! Expects me—for his rotten money!... Who wants his home? Mad—not he! Don’t you think. He wants his own way. He wanted to turn me into a miserable lawyer’s clerk, and now he wants to make of me a blamed tame rabbit in a cage. Of me! Of me!” His subdued angry laugh frightened her now.
“The whole world ain’t a bit too big for me to spread my elbows in, I can tell you—what’s your name—Bessie—let alone a dam’ parlour in a hutch. Marry! He wants me to marry and settle! And as likely as not he has looked out the girl too—dash my soul! And do you know the Judy, may I ask?”
She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and fretting too much to notice her distress. He bit his thumb with rage at the mere idea. A window rattled up.