“You lie!” said Harry, turning scarlet, and then as suddenly pale. “You lie!—and so that’s answered.”
Here followed a silence. The woman was not angry, but she tittered again and nodded her head.
“Wyvern’s out o’ my head. I never cared about it. I had my own reasons. I never did,” he swore, furiously, striking his hand on the table. “And I won’t see that boy ruined—my flesh and blood—my own nephew. No, no, Bertha, that would never do; the boy must have his own. I’ll see you made comfortable, but that lay won’t do—you’ll find it won’t pay nohow.”
“Speak out, man—what do you mean?” said Bertha.
“Come, come, come, Bertha, you’re no fool,” wheedled he, “there isn’t a sounder head from this to London; and though you be a bit hotheaded, you’re not as bad as you’d have us believe—’taint the worst, always, that has an o’er-hasty hand. Why, bless ye, girl, I’d be sorry ye were hurt, and I’ll help to get ye out o’ this, without scathe or scorn, if you’ll let me.”
“Well, come; what’s in your mind, Harry Vairfield?” she asked.
“I tell ye what it is, it can do you no good, nohow, bein’ hard on that boy, and I know, and you know, you never were married to poor Charlie.”
“You lie!” cried the lady, bitterly. So they were quits on the point of honour.
“Now, Bertha, lass, come now—reason, reason; don’t you be in a hurry, and just listen to reason, and I’ll make it better to you than fifty marriages.”
“Don’t you think I have no advice—I’ve engaged Mr. Wynell, the best attorney in Hatherton; I know what I’m about.”
“The better you know it, the better I’m pleased; but the lawyerfolk likes always a bit of a row—they seldom cries kiss and be friends until their hands be well greased, and their clients has a bellyful o’ law; therefore it’s better that friends should put their heads together and agree before it comes to that sort o’ milling, and I tell ye, ye shall be cared for; I’ll see to it, if you don’t be kickin’ up no rows about nothing.”
She laughed a quiet, scornful laugh.
“Oh ho! Master Harry, poor little fellow! he’s frightened, is he?”
“You’re damnably mistaken,” said he. “Frightened, indeed! I’ll see who’s frightened: I know there was no marriage—I know it, and it won’t do tryin’ it on me, you’ll just get yourself into the wrong box; where’s the use of runnin’ your head into a cotton bag?”
“Cotton bag your own head. Who’s to do it?”
“They’ll be clumsy fingers that can’t tie that knot, lass. Come, you’re a clever girl, you’re not to be talking—not like a fool. I know everything about it. If you try that on, it will turn out bad. ’Taint easy to green Harry Fairfield; I don’t think he was ever yet fooled by a lass but where he chose to be fooled, and it’s pretty well allowed there’s no use trying to bully him.”
“I ought to like you, if all that be so,” said she, “for you are very like my own self.”
“I’m not tryin’ to bully you, girl, nor to sell ye, neither; ye were always a bit rash, and too ready wi’ your hand; but them’s not the worst folk goin’. We Fairfields has a touch o’ it, and we shouldn’t be o’er hard on quick-tempered folk like that. There was no lass that ever I met, gentle or simple, that could match ye for good looks and pleasant talk, and ye dress so beautiful, and if ye had but your eyes this minute, you’d have who ye liked at your feet.”
And Harry Fairfield repeated this view of her charms with an oath.
“If ifs and ans were pots and pans,” repeated the lady with a sigh of gratification, and with that foreign accent and peculiar drawl which made the homely proverb sound particularly odd; “I forget the end—there would be no use in tinkers, I think.”
“Well said, Bertha! but there’s none like ye, not one, this minute, so handsome,” exclaims he.
“Not that chit down at Carwell Grange, I dare say—eh?”
“Alice! Not fit to stand behind your chair. If ye could but see her, and just look in the glass, ye’d answer that question yourself,” he replied.
“There it is again—if I could look in the glass—it is fourteen years since I did that—if I could see that fool of a girl—if—if—if!” she said, with an irrepressible simper—“the old proverb again—ifs and ans were pots and pans—’twas old Mistress Tarnley used to say that—a d⸺d old witch she always was,” she broke out, parenthetically, “and should be broke alive on the wheel.”
“Bang away wi’ the devil’s broomstick, and break her to smash for me,” said Harry. “But I’d sooner talk o’ yourself. Hang me, if you ever looked better—there’s no such figure; and, by the law, it’s looking up—it is—better and better every day. I like a tall lass, but ye beat them all, by the law, and ye shows off a dress so grandly.”
“Now don’t think, foolish thing, I like compliments—in at one ear and out of the other,” she said, with the same smirk, shaking her great head.
“Hoot, lass! Compliments, indeed! Why should I? Only this, that knowing you so long I just blurts out everything that comes uppermost, and it’s a pity ye shouldn’t have money to dress as ye should.”
“I never had that,” said the lady.
“Never—I know that well—and if ye won’t be said by me, ye’ll have less,” said Harry.
“I don’t think you know much about it,” said Bertha, serenely.
“Now, Bertha, child, you mustn’t keep contradictin’ me. I do know a deal about it—everything. There was no marriage, never.”
“As long as Charlie lived, ye never said that—you always backed me.”
“I’m not going to tell lies for no one,” said he, sulkily.
“Not going! Why you have been lying all your life—you’d lie for a shilling any day—all lies, you mean, miserly liar.”
“Come, Bertha,
