"He is a penniless artist."
"Well, I'm sure he is frightfully clever and will be able to sell his pictures for ever so much."
"Tchah!"
"Besides," said Molly defiantly, "when I marry I get that pearl necklace which father gave mother. I can sell that, and it will keep us going for years."
Mrs. Waddington was about to reply—and there is little reason to doubt that that reply would have been about as red-hot a come-back as any hundred and eighty pound woman had ever spoken—when she was checked by a sudden exclamation of agony that proceeded from the lips of her husband.
"Whatever is the matter, Sigsbee?" she said, annoyed.
Sigsbee H. seemed to be wrestling with acute mental agitation. He was staring at his daughter with protruding eyes.
"Did you say you were going to sell that necklace?" he stammered.
"Oh, be quiet, Sigsbee!" said Mrs. Waddington. "What does it matter whether she sells the necklace or not? It has nothing to do with the argument. The point is that this misguided girl is proposing to throw herself away on a miserable, paint-daubing, ukulele-playing artist...."
"He doesn't play the ukulele. He told me so."