“Sit down, mother, an’ don’t trouble your ’ed about that fool of a girl,” Mr. Ruan exclaimed, dashing down his paper into the butter-dish. “These ’igh-falutin’ ways don’t suit your mother or I,—so now I tell yer,” he continued, turning angrily to Bridget, “’usband or no ’usband, if you can’t make yourself pleasant at ’ome, you’d better clear out of it. Go an’ be an old maid somewhere else, that’s my advice to you.”
Bridget stood up slowly, trembling from head to foot. She clenched her hands, and she spoke with a great effort, forcing herself to utter the words quietly.
“Very well,” she said, her great eyes blazing, “I’ll take you at your word. I will go.”
She moved proudly from her seat to the door and closed it behind her.
Mrs. Ruan burst into tears.
“’Enry, she will!” she exclaimed wildly.
“Let ’er!” shouted Mr. Ruan. “Damn the girl. I’m sick of this. Who’s she, I should like to know? If we ain’t good enough for ’er, let ’er go and find them that is. Bring me my boots, Mary, an’ look sharp about it. Confound the women, say I. A man might ’ave a decently comfortable life without ’em. As it is, I’m glad to get out of the ’ouse.”
Professor Mansfield’s little flat was in the neighborhood of the British Museum.
The drawing-room, overlooking a formal square, was filled with the scent of violets the evening Bridget arrived. She sat after dinner in a low chair, in the rosy glow of the fire, deliciously conscious of the subtle flower-scents, of the play of light and shade on the books lining the low shelves round the walls, of the flash of orange or dainty pink out of the shadows, as the light glanced on a curtain or a rose-filled bowl.