“But you must lock her up when she gets to Wapping,” said Mrs. Bates regretfully, “or she’d write to him straight off to let him know where she was--and where would be the gain?”
“Well, Sally, we’d have had nothing to do with it, you know,” said Mr. Bates, not liking to put the suggestion into words--but yet feeling that if the thousand pounds was paid, and circumstances happened after, over which they had no control--why, they could have no control over circumstances--and nobody would ask them to give back the money. Mr. Bates’ wits had been sharpened by his tax-collecting, but his wife was not so clever.
“If we take the money, we’ll have to do the work,” she said, “and it’s all very well to talk, but who’ll manage Nancy? That girl do scare me.”
“Fudge! you can manage her if you like. What girl can stand out again her mother?” said Bates.
“It is a deal you know,” said his wife with mingled grandeur and scorn; “but I’ll sound Nancy. I think sometimes that she’s a bit tired of him. He’s a gentleman, and has nice ways; but he’s not so desperate in earnest like as John Raisins is after Sarah Jane.”
“Ah! that’s the kind of husband to get for your girls. A steady young fellow doing a good business, with a nice shop and a nice house. That’s the man for my money,” said Mr. Bates.
“That shows again just what a deal you know,” said she, “Sarah Jane would rather have had Mr. Durant, that lawyer fellow, if he had offered, than half a dozen of Johnny Raisins. That’s how it is with girls. A gentleman! that’s all their cry. And I won’t say but I like ’em best myself,” Mrs. Bates said after a pause. “They have a different way with them; but these are things that women take more notice of than men.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the tax-collector, piqued by the suggestion.
“You know, William,” said Mrs. Bates solemnly, “that if it hadn’t been for your genteel ways, and what you may call a genteel business, not like a shop, or that sort of thing, that I’d never have married you.”
“Oh, I like that!” he said. But he was on the whole pleased to think his occupation still struck his wife as a genteel business. “I’ve got to give an answer to the gentleman to-morrow, Sally. There’s not much time to lose.”