“Ay,” said Gervase, with a laugh, “and you can’t stop that, old lady, not if you should burst.”
“Don’t you be too sure I can’t stop it,” she cried. “Your father is not much good, but he is more good than you think; and if you suppose there’s no way of putting an idiot out of the line, you’re mistaken. There are plenty of asylums for fools, I can tell you; and if you are such a double-dyed fool as that——”
Gervase stared and grew pale; but then he took courage and laughed a weak laugh. “I may be a fool,” he said, “you’re always that nice to me, mamma: but there’s them in the world that will stand up for me, and cleverer than you.”
Lady Piercey stared also for a moment; and then turning to Mrs. Osborne, asked, “Meg! what does the ass mean?”
“Oh, have a little patience, aunt! He means—nothing, probably. He has been doing no harm, and he’s vexed to be blamed. Why should he be blamed when he has been doing no harm?”
“Do you call it no harm to bring the smell of an alehouse into my room?” cried Lady Piercey; “you will have to open all the windows to get rid of it, and probably I shall get my death of cold—which is what he would like, no doubt.”
Gervase laughed again, his lower lip more watery than ever. “Trust you for taking care of yourself,” he said. “If that’s all you have got to say, slanging a fellow for nothing, I’ll go to bed.”
“Stop here, when I tell you! and let me know this instant about that woman. Who is she that will have anything to say to you? Perhaps she thinks she will be my lady, and get my place after me—a girl that draws beer for all the ploughmen in the parish!”
“I don’t know who you’re speaking of,” said Gervase. His face grew a dull red, and he clenched his fist. “By Gosh! and if she marries me, so she will, and nobody can stop it,” he said.
“You had better banish this illusion from your mind,” said Lady Piercey, with solemnity. “A woman like that shall never be my lady, and come after me. It’s against—against the laws of this house; it’s against the law of the land. Your father can leave every penny away from you! And as for the name, it’s—it’s forbidden to a common person. The Lord Chancellor will not allow it!—the Queen will not have it! You might as well try to—to bring down St. Paul’s to Greyshott! Do you hear, you fool, what I say?”