‘Since they send for you, you will go, John? Oh, go! You must not throw everything away, because——’
‘Because—it does not matter to anybody, least of all to me. I’ll go away to America, or somewhere, and take that poor wretch, that light-hearted wretch——’
‘Oh, John, he is your father.’
‘I know: can you say anything worse? are you trying what is the hardest thing you can say?’
‘Oh, John!’ said poor Susie, and began to cry.
Her confusion, and trouble, and anxiety, not unmixed with a little exasperation, too, were not to be expressed in any other way.
He relented a little at the sight of her tears.
‘I think there’s no heart left in me,’ he said. ‘I make everybody that cares for me unhappy. You, out here in the street, and there, inside—Elly.’
‘Elly!’
Susie’s astonishment was so great that she could not find another word to say.