"Oh, well, he will get on some day, I daresay, and meanwhile I shall give Beatrice quite enough for them both when she marries."
"You don't understand, Andrew."
"No, my dear," very humbly, "perhaps I don't; but there, do as you think best, of course; I am sure I don't wish to interfere about the children; you always manage all these kind of things; and if you wouldn't mind, my dear, I am so very busy just now. You know there is to be this attack upon the Government as soon as the House meets, and I have the whole of the papers upon the Patagonian and Bolivian question to look up, and most fraudulent misstatements of the truth I believe them to be; although, as far as I've gone, I haven't been able to make it quite out yet, but I shall come to it—no doubt I shall come to it. I am going to speak upon this question, my dear, and I mean to tell the House that a grosser misrepresentation of facts was never yet promulgated from the Ministerial benches, nor flaunted in the faces of an all too leniently credulous Opposition; that will warm 'em up a bit, I flatter myself; those fellows in office will hang their heads in shame at the word Patagonia for weeks after."
"But who cares about Patagonia?"
"Oh, nobody much, I suppose. But there's bound to be an agitation against the Government, and that does as well as anything else. We can't afford to neglect a single chance of kicking them out. I have planned my speech pretty well right through; it will be very effective—withering, I fancy—but it's just these plaguy blue-books that won't quite tally with what I've got to say. I must go through them again though——"
"You had better have read the papers first, and settled your speech afterwards," suggested his wife.
"Oh dear, no! that wouldn't do at all; after all, you know, between you and me, the facts don't go for much; all we want is, to denounce them; any line of argument, if it is ingenious enough, will do; lay on the big words thickly—that's what your constituents like. Law bless you! they don't read the blue books; they'll take my word for granted if I say they are full of lies; it would be a comfort, however, if I could find a few. Of course, my dear, this is only between you and me."
A man is not always heroic to the wife of his bosom. Mrs. Miller went her way and left him to his righteous struggle among the Patagonian blue-books. After all, she said to herself, it had been her duty to inform him of his daughter's conduct, but it was needless to discuss the question further with him. He was incapable of approaching it from her own point of view. It would be better for her now to go her own way independently of him. She had always been accustomed to manage things her own way. It was nothing new to her.
Later in the day she attempted to wrest a promise from Beatrice that she would hold no further communication with the prohibited lover. But Beatrice would give no such promise.
"Is it likely that I should promise such a thing?" she asked her mother, indignantly.