"I've never said a word of love to her in my life."
"Oh, how," cried Mavis, "can you make such a pretense?"
"Because it's the truth."
"But," said Mavis, indignantly, "you've made her fond of you. You've courted her."
The higgler distinctly preened himself, and smiled archly. "Ah, there's a language of the eyes, which speaks perhaps when the lips are sealed."
Mavis was angry and disgusted. "You, a married man!"
Dale, outraged too, spoke with increasing sternness. "You don't deny you've got a wife?"
The higgler answered very gravely. "Mr. Dale, that's my misfortune, not my fault. But my wife isn't going to last forever, and the day she's gone—that is, the day after I've buried her decently—I shall come here to Mary Parsons and say 'Mary'—mind you, I've never called her Mary yet—I shall say, 'Mary, my lips are unsealed, and I ask you to be my true and lawful second wife.'"
They could make nothing of the higgler.
"It's seven years," he went on, "since Doctor Hollin said to me, 'I have to warn you Mrs. Druitt isn't going to make old bones.' However, we find it a long job. There's a proverb, isn't there? Creaking doors!"