“Well, ’twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we expect him to be? I don’t care who the man is, snails and caterpillars always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing way.”
“He wasn’t alive, I suppose?” said Giles, with a shudder on Grace’s account.
“Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid that a live snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that’s served by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don’t mind ’em myself—them small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they’ve lived on cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed little lady, she didn’t say a word about it; though ’twould have made good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially as wit ran short among us sometimes.”
“Oh yes—’tis all over!” murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than ever. “Do you know, Robert,” he said, “that she’s been accustomed to servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could she stand our ways?”
“Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere. They shouldn’t have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor men shouldn’t give randys, or if they do give ’em, only to their own race.”
“Perhaps that’s true,” said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh.
CHAPTER XI.
“’Tis a pity—a thousand pities!” her father kept saying next morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.
But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne’s suit at this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote—was, indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was approaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances, and it would have to be met.
But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what an immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for several years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself.