'And,' continued Winefred, looking straight into his eye, 'Thursday night at eleven, at Heathfield Cross.'
'I thought as much,' muttered Jack.
'Well, am I to have thanks for the message?'
'I don't know,' he returned, brooding.
'Jack,' said Winefred, 'put your foot down and say—I won't.'
'What do you mean?' he asked, looking at her in surprise.
'I know—or can guess what it is about. I have not been up and down peddling here and hawking there, and not heard a thing or two. My ears are pointed, and I catch a good deal. Your father is just thrusting you on the same road as he has walked. It is my belief that if the little one of the flat fish said, I will swim straight, he would come out without crooked eyes, and not become a flounder, but be a mackerel. If once you begin to go in and out at the back door, you'll never take to that in the front of the house.'
'You do not understand—my father is not a man to be disobeyed.'
'I'd peddle before I did it,' said Winefred with vehemence. 'A peddling woman is honest, and carries her wares slung in front of her, and a—you know what—bears his behind his back. A peddling woman goes about by day along the high road, and is not caught slinking in bye-lanes of a night. You are a fine fellow with your Latin grammar, and learning to be a gentleman, to turn up your nose at my mother because she hawks laces, and then sneak away to cheat the government over spirits. I don't know whether it be a matter of right and wrong, all I know is it don't look honest, and I hate crooked ways.'