“Think, sir! What business had you to think? I tell you what it is, you are much too fond of thinking. If you would only leave the thinking to me, and do what you are told, it would be much better for you.”
Tom’s first impulse was to make a sharp reply, and to express his willingness to leave, but for certain private reasons he was silent. Encouraged by the apparent absence of resistance, Mr. Furze continued—
“I’ve meant to have a word or two with you several times. You seem to have forgotten your position altogether, and that I am master here, and not you. You, perhaps, do not remember where you came from, and what you would have been if I had not picked you up. Let there be no misunderstanding in future.”
“There shall be none, sir. Shall I call at the factory and explain your wishes about the grindstone? I will tell them I was mistaken, and that they had better have one of those in stock.”
“No, you cannot do that now; let matters remain as they are; I must lose the sale of the stone and put up with it.”
Tom withdrew. That evening, after supper, Mr. Furze, anxious to show his wife that he possessed some power to quell opposition, told her what had happened. It met with her entire approval. She hated Tom. For all hatred, as well as for all love, there is doubtless a reason, but the reasons for the hatreds of a woman of Mrs. Furze’s stamp are often obscure, and perhaps more nearly an exception than any other known fact in nature to the rule that every effect must have a cause.
“I would get rid of him,” said she. “I think that his not replying to you is ten times more aggravating than if he had gone into a passion.”
“You cannot get rid of him,” said Catharine.
“Cannot! What do you mean, Catharine—cannot? I like that! Do you suppose that I do not understand my own business—I who took him up out of the gutter and taught him? Cannot, indeed!”
“Of course you can get rid of him, father; but I would not advise you to try it.”