"Well, and if he only keeps on as I have, until he gets up to my present age, he won't be in a bad boat, eh, Mrs. Burrill the first."
"He's got too much of his mother's grit to be where you are, John Burrill, livin' a lackey among people that despise you because you have got a hand on 'em somewhere. I want to know if you don't think they will choke you off some day when they are done using you?"
John Burrill seated himself astride a low wooden chair, and propelling it and himself forward by a movement of the feet and a "hitch" of the shoulders, he leaned across the chair back in his most facetious manner, and addressed her with severe eloquence.
"Look here, Mrs. Burrill number one, don't you take advantage of your position, and ride the high horse too free. It's something to 'ave been Mrs. J. Burrill once, I'll admit; but don't let it elevate you too much. You ain't quite so handsome as the present Mrs. Burrill, neither are you so young, consequently you don't show off so well in a tantrum. Now the present Mrs. Burrill—"
"Oh, then she does have tantrums, the present Mrs. Burrill," sneered the woman, fairly quivering with suppressed rage. "One would think she would be so proud of you that she could excuse all your little faults. Brooks says that they all talk French up there, so that you can't wring into their confabs, John."
"Does he?" remarked Burrill, quietly, but with an ominous gleam in his ugly eyes. "Brooks must be careful of that tongue of his. You may reckon that they all stop their French when I begin to talk. Now, don't be disagreeable, Nance; it ain't every man that can take a rise in the world like me, and I don't put on airs, and hold myself above my old friends. Do you think that every man could step into such a family as I belong to, Mrs. Burrill? No one can say that John Burrill's a common fellow after that feat."
"No, but a great many can say that John Burrill's a mean fellow, too mean to walk over. Do you think the men as you worked along side of, and drank and supped with, don't know what you are, John Burrill! Do you think that they don't all know that your outrageous vanity has made a fool of you? Chance threw into your hands a secret of the Lamottes; you need not stare, we ain't fools down here at the factories. Maybe I know what that secret is, and maybe I don't. It's no matter. I know more of your doings than you give me credit for, John Burrill. Now, what must you do? Blackmail would have satisfied a sensible man; but straightway you are seized with the idea that you were born to be a gentleman. You! Then you form your plan; and you force, by means of the power in your hands, that beautiful young lady to marry you."
"Seems to me," interrupts the man who has been listening quite contentedly, "that you are getting along too fast with your story."
"Yes, I am too fast. When you first hatched out this plan, you came to me and put a pistol to my head, and swore that if I didn't apply for a divorce from you at once, you would blow my brains out. I had swore more than once to have a divorce; and Lord knows I had cause enough; what, with the drunkenness and the beatings, and the idleness, and the night prowlin', and all the rest; but I never expected that."
The woman paused for a moment, and then resumed her tirade of mixed eloquence and bad grammar.