"My tongue?" said Dan. "It's my character I have to take care of, woman. When a girl is carrying a man's name that has no legal claim to it, he has a right to do that, I'm thinking."
"But the girl's only a child—only a child itself, man."
"Maybe so, but I've known girls before now, not much older than she is, to bring disgrace into a dacent house and lave others to live under it. 'What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh,' they're saying."
The woman flinched as if the lash of a whip had fallen on her face, and Dan turned back to the girl.
"So you're a fine lady that belaves in the aristocracks, are you? Well, I'm a plain man that doesn't, and nobody living in my house can have any truck with them."
"But goodness me, Dan, the boy is not a dale older than herself," said Mrs. Collister. "Nineteen years at the most, and a fine boy at that."
"Chut! Nineteen or ninety, it's all as one to me," said Dan, "and this island will be knowing what sort of boy he is before he has done with it."
The young cubs of the "big ones" began early. They treated the daughters of decent men as their fathers treated everybody—using them, abusing them, and then treading on them like dirt.
"But Manx girl are hot young huzzies," said Dan, "and the half of them ought to be ducked in the mill pond.... What did you expect this one would do for you, girl, after you had been colloquing and cooshing and kissing with him in the dark roads? Marry you? Make you the mistress of Ballamoar? Bessie Corteen, the by-child of Liza Collister? You toot! You booby! You boght! You damned idiot!"
Just then there was the sound of wheels on the road, and Dan walked to the door to look out. It was the Deemster's dog-cart, coming down the glen, with father and son sitting side by side. The women heard the Deemster's steady voice saluting the miller as he went by.