'I couldn't possibly ask her; she'd never come and stay with a manufacturer,' declared Sarah again.
'I'd be bound she'd jump at it. She'd not get a better dinner at 'ome or anyw'ere, nor a better room to sleep in,' said Mrs Clay.
This remark grated upon both her children, as so many of poor Mrs Clay's sayings did; but George, tactful as usual, remarked, 'Suppose you write and ask Miss Cunningham, Sarah; and if she is too proud to visit a maker of blankets, why, she will refuse, and there will be the end of it; and if she accepts, it will show that her friendship for you is stronger than class prejudices.'
Sarah looked at her brother for a minute as if she wanted to say something, but did not do so, and only drummed with her crimson-dyed fingers on the white table-cloth, taking apparently great delight in their appearance.
'Yes; you do as your brother tells you, instead of sittin' there smilin' at them dreadful 'ands o' yours. I'm sure they're nothin' to be proud o'. Now, if you lived in Howroyd's Mill, w'ere your uncle Bill lives, you might be ashamed to ask the young lady to stay wi' you; but 'ere it's quite different,' said Mrs Clay.
The brother and sister, it will have been noticed, always called their father's step-brother Uncle Howroyd, whereas their mother and father called him Bill or 'your uncle Bill.' The fact was that the younger people did not like 'Bill,' and George said he was thankful for one thing, and that was that his name could not be shortened; while Sarah had made violent protests against being called Sally or Sal, and would not allow any one except her father, whom she could not control, to call her anything but Sarah; and, indeed, the latter name suited her best.
Sarah followed her brother into his smoking-den. 'Pshaw! What a stuffy room!' she exclaimed, as she threw herself upon the cushioned window-seat.
'If it does not please you I fail to see why you have come into it; and as for being stuffy'—— Instead of completing his sentence George shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say the accusation was too absurd to be argued about.
'It is stuffy, with all those cushions and carpets about, and pictures and gimcracks, for all its big windows. I can't think how you like to stuff it up with all this rubbish,' persisted Sarah.
'This rubbish, as you call it, is worth a pretty penny,' he remarked, lighting a cigarette.