“To keep a shop warn’t good enough for yer, I suppose,” Captain Jenkyns had remarked in his agreeable way.
“No,” Goddard had answered coldly—he did not love the captain. “It wasn’t.”
And then he had proceeded with his story. But the talk languished. Lizzie, never expansive in her father’s presence, was less so to-day than usual. Goddard’s sudden accession to wealth—riches beyond the dreams of Lizzie’s avarice—somewhat awed her, after the first excitement had passed. His cleverness, his personality, all in fact that differentiated him from Joe Forster the tobacconist and his class, had always put him a little beyond her reach; but now that he was a rich man as well, she felt frightened and abashed. She offered him bread and butter timidly, and flushed scarlet when she awkwardly flooded his tea-cup. Then crumbs of cake went the wrong way, and she retired to the window to hide her discomfiture.
“And now you’re a hindependent gentleman,” said the old man after a pause, setting down his saucer. “I suppose you won’t want to be thinking of marrying my gell.”
Goddard sprang to his feet. He had his own reasons for feeling stung to the quick.
“You have no right to say that,” he cried hotly. “What do you take me for?”
The ex-captain made the motion of “Ease her!” with his hand, and chuckled.
“Do you think I don’t know human natur’, when I’ve seed boat-loads of it every day for sixty years?”
“Well, you don’t know my nature,” said Daniel. “Lizzie, come here. We’ll soon settle that matter.”
Lizzie turned from the window and advanced towards him, flushing uncomfortably.