“Damn it all, if I ever get the pears, I’ve paid precious high for ’em,” he thought; all the same his daughter’s calm, contemplative, contemptuous glance made him feel that at his age he had no business to be tempted by such sweet forbidden fruit.
“What do you watch me for so?” he said savagely one day. “I was not aware that I did,” she replied, and was quite truthful in the reply.
“You are terrible unfilial, my dear!” cried Mrs. Massarene. “What tens of thousands there is as would give their souls to be in your shoes.”
“Possibly,” said Katherine with fatigue. The opinions she had expressed to Lord Framlingham in India were still hers, unaltered, indeed strengthened, by all which she had seen in English society since her return to her parents’ house.
She often thought of the walk across the frozen fields to Greater Thrope, and when once or twice she saw Hurstmanceaux when riding, or at the opera, she felt a sense of shame burn in her heart and warm her cheeks which it required all her serenity and self-control to restrain from outward evidence.
“The hangman’s daughter!” she said to herself, recalling the speech she had overheard at Bedlowes. “Oh, how right he was!”
When he saw her he bowed to her gravely and courteously, but never attempted to approach her.
“My dear child, if you rile your father he won’t leave you nothing,” said Margaret Massarene, in her emotion forgetting the syntax of her new sphere.
“So be it,” said Katherine; “but why do you speak of him as so sure to die before me? He is a very strong man and he is only fifty-seven.”
“My dear,” whispered her mother in sepulchral tones, “’tis true he’s a very strong man, but the cooking’ll kill him before his time, to say nothing of other things. Look ye, Kathleen, a man works like a horse and lives like an ox all the best of his years, just beef and bread and bacon and beer, and them only taken in snacks, just to keep the body going. Then all at once, when he’s made his pile, he says, says he, ‘Now I’ll stuff,’ and he eats like ten princes rolled in one and drinks in proportion, because he’s made his money and why shouldn’t he spend it? And he forgets as he’s a liver, and he forgets as he ain’t as young as he used to be, and he forgets as the fatted hog would die of fat if the butcher didn’t stick him first.”