“Fudge! you can manage her if you like. What girl can stand out again her mother?” said Bates.
“It is a deal you know,” said his wife with mingled grandeur and scorn; “but I’ll sound Nancy. I think sometimes that she’s a bit tired of him. He’s a gentleman, and has nice ways; but he’s not so desperate in earnest like as John Raisins is after Sarah Jane.”
“Ah! that’s the kind of husband to get for your girls. A steady young fellow doing a good business, with a nice shop and a nice house. That’s the man for my money,” said Mr. Bates.
“That shows again just what a deal you know,” said she, “Sarah Jane would rather have had Mr. Durant, that lawyer fellow, if he had offered, than half a dozen of Johnny Raisins. That’s how it is with girls. A gentleman! that’s all their cry. And I won’t say but I like ’em best myself,” Mrs. Bates said after a pause. “They have a different way with them; but these are things that women take more notice of than men.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the tax-collector, piqued by the suggestion.
“You know, William,” said Mrs. Bates solemnly, “that if it hadn’t been for your genteel ways, and what you may call a genteel business, not like a shop, or that sort of thing, that I’d never have married you.”
“Oh, I like that!” he said. But he was on the whole pleased to think his occupation still struck his wife as a genteel business. “I’ve got to give an answer to the gentleman to-morrow, Sally. There’s not much time to lose.”
“I’ll sound Nancy,” said Mrs. Bates, but she shook her head.
“Sound her! I’d pack her off to Sam,” said the father; but that only showed how little he knew.
And Nancy, as Mrs. Bates divined, on being sounded, was furious. She had no words to express her indignation. She rushed out in hot haste to find Arthur, and denounce his family to him. He had left Mr. Eagles, and was living in lodgings on the Green, and there Nancy flew in hot haste, tapping at his window, which was on the ground floor, and calling him forth. She would have gone in, but it had been evident to her that this was not the kind of thing that pleased Arthur. She burst forth into a furious assault upon his family the moment he joined her.