Page:Shirley (1849 Volume 1).djvu/232

 accordingly: which part of her conduct, indeed, might be said to have its just and sensible, as well as its harsh side.

"Well, is it you?" she says to Mr. Moore, as he comes up to her and gives his hand. "What are you roving about at this time of night for? You should be at home."

"Can a single man be said to have a home, madam?" he asks.

"Pooh!" says Mrs. Yorke, who despises conventional smoothness quite as much as her husband does, and practises it as little, and whose plain speaking, on all occasions, is carried to a point calculated, sometimes, to awaken admiration, but oftener alarm—"Pooh! you need not talk nonsense to me; a single man can have a home if he likes. Pray, does not your sister make a home for you?"

"Not she," joined in Mr. Yorke. "Hortense is an honest lass; but when I was Robert's age, I had five or six sisters, all as decent and proper as she is, but you see, Hesther, for all that, it did not hinder me from looking out for a wife."

"And sorely he has repented marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment (here she pointed to