The String of Pearls (1850), p. 338

"You cannot guess, Mr. Ben, what I have done; but I feel I ought to tell you, and it will be quite a relief to me to do so."
Ben shook his head.
"I tell you what it is, my dear," he said. "Your best plan is to go and tell your mother, my dear. That's the proper person to tell. She is sure to find it out somehow or another; and you had better tell her at once, and then—Easy does it."
"My mother? Tell my mother? Oh, no—no—no!"
"Well, if you have got any respectable old aunt now, who is a good, kind old soul, and would not make too much fuss, you had better tell her; but goodness gracious, my dear, what puts it into your head to tell me?"
"Because I think you are kind-hearted."
"Well, but—well, but—"
"And, then, of course, as you are mixed up, you know, Mr. Ben, in the whole transaction, it is only proper that you should know what has happened at
last."
Ben turned fairly round, and looked down into the face of Arabella Wilmot with such a course expression of alarm upon his face, that at any other than so serious a time she must have laughed.
"Me?" he cried. "Me?"
"Yes, Mr. Ben."
"Me mixed up in the—the—Oh dear!"
"Ah, Mr. Ben, you know you are by far to kind not too be; and so I feel as though it would be quite a relief to me to tell you everything."
"Everything?"
"Yes, all—all."
"Not all the particulars, surely. Come—come. I ain't an old woman, you know, my dear."
"An old woman, Ben?"
"No, my dear, I say I ain't an eldery female, so I don't think I ought to listen to all the particulars, do you know. Come—come, you go home now,
and say no more about it to me. Easy does it, you know ; and keep your own counsel. I won't say a word; but don't you, because you are in such a state of
mind as you hardly know what you are about, go on blubbering to me about all the particulars, when perhaps to-morrow you'll give one of your pretty little
ears that you had not said a word to me about it."
"Alas!—Alas!"
"Pho! Pho! Easy does it."
"Who am I to cling to but you?"
"Cling to me? Perhaps you'll say it's me?"
"What's you, Mr. Ben? Explain yourself. How strange you talk. What do you mean, Mr. Ben?"
"Well, that's cool," said Ben.
"What's cool?"
"I tell you what it is, Miss Arabella W., I'm disappointed in you; ain't you
askamed to look me in the face?"
"Ashamed?"
"Yes, positively ashamed?"
"No, Mr. Ben. I may regret the indiscertion that is past; but I cannot see in it anything to be ashamed of."
"You don't?"
"Indeed, Mr. Ben, I do not."
"Then, Miss A. W., you are about the coolest little piece of goods I have meet with for some time. Come—come, easy does it; but haven't you been telling me all this time about something you have been about, that—that—was rather improper, in a manner of speaking?"
It might have been the tone in which Ben pronounced the word improper, or it might have been the sagacious shake of the head which Ben accompanied