“You show unusual perspicacity, dear James,” said Basil, with a frigid smile.
“Look here, Basil, let me give you a bit of advice. Don’t put on quite so much side, or you’ll hurt yourself.”
“I observe that you have not acquired the useful art of being uncivil without being impertinent.”
There was nothing James could brook less easily than the irony and the deliberate sarcasm with which Basil invariably answered him, and now in his exasperation, forgetting all prudence, he jumped up.
“Look ’ere, I’ve ’ad about enough of this. I’m not going to stand you sneerin’ and snarlin’ at me when I come here. You seem to think I’m nobody, I should just like to know why you go on as if I was I don’t know what.”
“Because I choose,” answered Basil, looking him up and down with chilling scorn.
Jenny’s heart beat furiously as she foresaw the approaching quarrel, and in an undertone, hurriedly, she begged James to hold his tongue. But he would not be restrained.
“You can bet anything you like I don’t come ’ere to see you.”
“It has been borne in upon me that the length of my I purse attracts you more than the charm of my conversation. I wonder why you imagined, because I married your sister, I was bound to support the whole gang of you for the rest of your lives? Would you have the intense amiability to inform your family that I’m sick and tired of giving money?”
“I wonder you don’t forbid us your house while you’re about it,” snarled James.