Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/622

Rh "What, young woman!" blubbered Rob; "are you against me too? What have I been and done? What am I to be tore to pieces for, I should like to know? Why do you take and choke a cove who has never done you any harm, neither of you? Call yourselves females, too!" said the frightened and afflicted Grinder, with his coat-cuff at his eye. "I’m surprised at you! Where’s your feminine tenderness?"

"You thankless dog!" gasped Mrs. Brown. "You impudent insulting dog!"

"What have I been and done to go and give you offence, Misses Brown?" retorted the fearful Rob. "You was very much attached to me a minute ago."

"To cut me off with his short answers and his sulky words," said the old woman. "Me! Because I happen to be curious to have a little bit of gossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at fast and loose with me! But I ’ll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!"

"I’m sure, Misses Brown," returned the abject Grinder, "I never insiniwated that I wished to go. Don’t talk like that, Misses Brown, if you please."

"I won’t talk at all," said Mrs. Brown, with an action of her crooked fingers that made him shrink into half his natural compass in the corner. "Not another word with him shall pass my lips. He’s an ungrateful hound. I cast him off. Now let him go! And I ’ll slip those after him that shall talk too much; that won’t be shook away; that ’ll hang to him like leeches, and slink arter him like foxes. What! He knows 'em. He knows his old games and his old ways. If he’s forgotten 'em, they ’ll soon remind him. Now let him go, and see how he’ll do Master’s business, and keep Master’s secrets, with such company always following him up and down. Ha, ha, ha! He ’ll find 'em a different sort from you and me, Ally; close as he is with you and me. Now let him go, now let him go!"

The old woman, to the unspeakable dismay of the Grinder, walked her twisted figure round and round, in a ring of some four feet in diameter, constantly repeating these words, and shaking her fist above her head, and working her mouth about.

"Misses Brown," pleaded Rob, coming a little out of his corner, "I’m sure you wouldn’t injure a cove, on second thoughts, and in cold blood, would you?"

"Don’t talk to me," said Mrs. Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her circle. "Now let him go, now let him go!"

"Misses Brown," urged the tormented Grinder, "I didn’t mean to—Oh, what a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this!—I was only careful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on account of his being up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn’t have gone any further. I’m sure I’m quite agreeable," with a wretched face, "for any little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don’t go on like this, if you please. Oh, couldn’t you have the goodness to put in a word for a miserable cove, here?" said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the daughter.

"Come, mother, you hear what he says," she interposed, in her stern