The String of Pearls (1850), p. 218

CHAPTER XLV.
JOHANNA'S NEW SITUATION.

"Johanna, attend to me," said Mrs. Oakley, upon the morning after these events."
"Well, mother?"
"Your father is an idiot."
"Mother, mother! I dissent from the opinion, and if it were true, it comes
with the worst possible grace from you, but I am sick at heart. I pray you to
spare me reproaches or angry words, mother."
"Haity taity, one must not speak next, I suppose. Some people fancy that other people know nothing, but there is such a thing as overhearing what some people say to other people."
Johanna had not the most remote notion of what her mother meant, but Mrs.
Oakley's tongue was like many pieces of machinery, that when once set in
motion are not without considerable trouble brought to a standstill again, so on
she went.
"Of course. I now know quite well why the godly man who would have
made you a chosen vessel was refused. It was all owing to that scamp, Mark
Ingestrie."
"Mother!"
"Marry come up! you need not look at me in such a way. We don't all
of us see with the same eyes. A scamp he is, and a scamp he will be."
"Mother, he whom you so name is with his God. Mention him no more.
The wild ocean rolls over his body—his soul is in heaven. Speak not irreverently of one whose sole crime was that he loved me. Oh, mother, mother, you—"
Johanna could say no more, she burst into tears.
"Well," said Mrs. Oakley, "if he is dead, pray what hinders you from
listening to the chosen vessel, I should like to know?"
"Do not. Oh do not, mother, say any more to me—I cannot, dare not trust
myself to speak to you upon such a subject."
"What is this?" said Mr. Oakley, stepping into the room. "Johanna in
tears! What has happened?"0
"Father—dear father!''
"And Mr. O.," cried Mrs. Oakley, "what business is it of yours, I should
like to know? Be so good, sir, as to attend to your spectacles, and such like
rubbish, and not to interfere with my daughter."
"Dear me!—ain't she my daughter likewise?"
"Oh yes, Mr. O.! Go on with your base, vile, wretched, contemptible, unmanly insinuations. Do go on, pray—I like it. Oh, you odious wretch! You
spectacle-making monster!"
"Do not," cried Johanna, who saw the heightened colour of her father's
cheek. "Oh, do not let me be the unhappy cause of any quarrelling. Father!
father!"
"Hush, my dear, don't you say another word. Cousin Ben is coming to take
a little bit of lunch with us to-day.''
"I know it," cried Mrs. Oakley, clapping her hands together with a vengeance
that made Oakley jump again. "I know it. Oh, you wretch. You couldn't
have put on such airs if your bully had not been coming; I thought the last time
he came here was enough for him. Aye, and for you too, Mr. O."
"It was nearly too much," said the spectacle-maker, shaking his head.
"Tow row, row, row, row!" cried Big Ben, popping his head into the
parlour, "what do you all bring it in now? Wilful murder with the chill off or
what? Ah, mother Oakley, what's the price of vinegar now, wholesale—pluck does it. Here you is. Ha, ha! Aint we a united family. Couldn't stay away