'George should not have gone when she asked him,' said the girl.
'Dear Sackalive! she twists him round her little finger. He no more dare deny her anything than he dare defy me. But I will have my boy respectable, I can promise you. I combed his head well for him when he came home, I did by cock! He shall not do the thing again.'
'Look here, mother,' remonstrated George; 'wash our dirty linen in private.'
'Indeed!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'That is strange doctrine! Why, who would know we wore any linen at all next our skin, unless we exposed it when washed over the side of the wessel? Now you come here. I have a bone to pick along with you, George!'
To be on a level with her son, and stare him full in the eyes, a way she had with everyone she assailed, she sat on the table, and put her feet on the chair.
'What has become of the money? I have been to the box, and there are twenty pounds gone out of it, all in gold. I haven't took it, so you must have. Now I want to know what you have done with it. I will have it out. I endure no evasions. Where is the money? Fork it out, or I will turn all your pockets inside out, and find and retake it. You want no money, not you. I provide you with tobacco. Where is the money? Twenty pounds, and all in gold. I was like a shrimp in scalding water when I went to the box to-day and found the money gone. I turned that red you might have said it was erysipelas. I shruck out that they might have heard me at the City. Turn your pockets out at once.'
George looked abashed; he was cowed by his mother.
'I'll take the carving knife to you!' said the woman, 'if you do not hand me over the cash at once.'
'Oh don't, pray don't hurt him!' cried Phoebe, interposing her arm, and beginning to cry.
'Dear Sackalive!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt, 'I am not aiming at his witals, but at his pockets. Where is the money?'