you are going to see this young man again!" This came from Mrs
Baggett, who had been in great perturbation all the morning. The
Sergeant had slept in the stables through the night, and had had his
breakfast brought to him, warm, by his own wife; but he had sat up
among the straw, and had winked at her, and had asked her to give him
threepence of gin with the cat-lap. To this she had acceded, thinking
probably that she could not altogether deprive him of the food to
which he was accustomed without injury. Then, under the influence
of the gin and the promise of a ticket to Portsmouth, which she
undertook to get for him at the station, he was induced to go down
with her, and was absolutely despatched. Her own box was still locked
up, and she had slept with one of the two maids. All this had not
happened without great disturbance in the household. She herself was
very angry with her master because of the box; she was very angry
with Mary, because Mary was, she thought, averse to her old lover;
she was very angry with Mr Gordon, because she well understood that
Mr Gordon was anxious to disturb the arrangement which had been made
for the family. She was very angry with her husband, not because he
was generally a drunken old reprobate, but because he had especially
disgraced her on the present occasion by the noise which he had made
in the road. No doubt she had been treated unfairly in the matter of
the box, and could have succeeded in getting the law of her master.
But she could not turn against her master in that way. She could give
him a bit of her own mind, and that she did very freely; but she
could not bring herself to break the lock of his door. And then, as
things went now, she did think it well that she should remain a few
days longer at Croker's Hall. The occasion of her master's marriage
was to be the cause of her going away. She could not endure not to be
foremost among all the women at Croker's Hall. But it was intolerable
to her feelings that any one should interfere with her master; and
she thought that, if need were, she could assist him by her tongue.
Therefore she was disposed to remain yet a few days in her old place,
and had come, after she had got the ticket for her husband,--which
had been done before Mr Whittlestaff's breakfast,--to inform her
master of her determination. "Don't be a fool," Mr Whittlestaff had
said.

"I'm always a fool, whether I go or stay, so that don't much matter."
This had been he