“What!” he cried; “do you mean to say that you didn’t break the sixpence with me?”
“Do you mean to say, Will, that I did? As for you breaking it, I do not deny that: I remember that you snapped it between your fingers without asking me anything about it; but to say that I broke it, or assented to your breaking it, or carried away the other half—Fie, Will, fie!”
“This wench,” he said, “is enough to drive a man mad. Yet, for all your fine clothes and your paint and powder, Mistress Kitty, I’ve promised to marry you. And marry you I will. Put that in your pipe, now.”
“Marry me against my consent, Will? That can hardly be.”
“Is it possible,” cried Mrs. Esther, seriously displeased, “that we have in this rude and discourteous person a son of Sir Robert Levett?”
“I never was crossed by woman or man or puppy yet,” cried Will doggedly, and taking no notice whatever of Mrs. Esther’s rebuke; “and I never will be! Why, for a whole year and more I’ve been making preparations for it. I’ve broke in the colt out of Rosamund by Samson and called him Kit, for you to ride. I’ve told the people round, so as anybody knows there’s no pride in me, that I’m going to marry a parson’s girl, without a farden, thof a baronet to be——”
Will easily dropped into rustic language, where I do not always follow him.
“Oh, thank you, Will. That is kind indeed. But I would rather see you show the pride due to your rank and birth. You ought to refuse to marry a parson’s girl. Or, if you are resolved to cast away your pride, there’s many a farmer’s girl—there’s Jenny of the Mill, or the blacksmith’s Sue: more proper persons for you, I am sure, and more congenial to your tastes than the parson’s girl.”
“I don’t mind your sneering—not a whit, I don’t,” he replied. “Wait till we’re married, and I warrant you shall see who’s got the upper hand! There’ll be mighty little sneering then, I promise you.”
This brutal and barbarous speech made me angry.