Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/98

88 "No."

"Well, I think you're better without him, sure enough—for my part, I'm downright weary of him. I told him I'd leave him if he didn't mend his manners—and he wouldn't; so I left him—you see I'm a better man than you think me;—and what's more, I have serious thoughts of washing my hands of him entirely, and the whole set of 'em, and comporting myself from this day forward, with all decency and sobriety as a christian and the father of a family should do.—What do you think of that?"

"It is a resolution you ought to have formed long ago."

"Well, I'm not thirty yet: it isn't too late, is it?"

"No; it is never too late to reform, as long as you have the sense to desire it, and the strength to execute your purpose."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all—you