ked about that
I shall be ashamed to show myself. What's the good of me trying to
behave, if you keep going on like that?"

"Why didn't you take that chap when he came after you down to
Margate?"

"Because I didn't choose. I don't care enough for him; and it's all
no use of you going on. I wouldn't have him if he came twenty times.
I've made up my mind, so I tell you."

"You're a very grand young woman."

"I'm grand enough to have a will of my own about that. I'm not going
to be made to marry any man, I know."

"And you mean to take that long-legged shoemaker's apprentice."

"He's not a shoemaker's apprentice any more than I'm a
breeches-maker's apprentice." Polly was now quite in earnest, and in
no mood for picking her words. "He is a bootmaker by his trade; and
I've never said anything about taking him."

"You've given him a promise."

"No; I've not."

"And you'd better not, unless you want to walk out of this house with
nothing but the rags on your back. Ain't I doing it all for you?
Ain't I been sweating my life out these thirty years to make you a
lady?" This was hard upon Polly, as she was not yet one-and-twenty.

"I don't want to be a lady; no more than I am just by myself, like.
If I can't be a lady without being made one, I won't be a lady at
all."

"You be blowed."

"There are different kinds of ladies, father. I want to be such a
one as neither you nor mother shall ever have cause to say I didn't
behave myself."

"You'd talk the figures off a milestone," said Mr. Neefit, as he
returned to his arm-chair, to his gin-and-water, to his growlings,
and before long to his slumbers. Throughout the whole evening he was
very unpleasant in the bosom of his family,--which consisted on this
occasion of his wife only, as Polly took the opportunity of going out
to drink tea with a young lady friend. Neefit, when he heard this,
suggested that Ontario was drinking tea at the same house, and would
have pursued his daughter but for mingled protestations and menaces
which his wife used for preventing such a violation of parental
authority. "Moggs don't know from Adam where she is; and you never
knowed her do anything of that kind. And you'll go about with your
mad schemes and jealousies till you about ruin the poor girl; that's
what you will. I won't have it. If you go, I'll go too, and I'll
shame you. No; you shan't have your hat. Of course she'll be off some
day, if you make the place that wretched that she