rns out that you've only got a share in it, and
for aught I can see, by no means the best share. Why wasn't I told
all that before?"

"Woman!" shouted Mr. Tappitt.

"Yes; woman indeed! I suppose I am a woman, and therefore I'm to have
no voice in anything. Will you answer me one question, if you please?
Are you going to that man, Sharpit?"

"Yes, I am."

"Then, Mr. Tappitt, I shall consult my brothers." Mrs. Tappitt's
brothers were grocers in Plymouth; men whom Mr. Tappitt had never
loved. "They mayn't hold their heads quite as high as you do,--or
rather as you used to do when people thought that the establishment
was all your own; but such as it is nobody can turn them out of
their shop in the Market-place. If you are going to Sharpit, I shall
consult them."

"You may consult the devil, if you like it."

"Oh, oh! very well, Mr. Tappitt. It's clear enough that you're not
yourself any longer, and that somebody must take up your affairs and
manage them for you. If you'll follow my advice you'll stay at home
this evening and take a dose of physic and see Dr. Haustus quietly in
the morning."

"I shall do nothing of the kind."

"Very well. Of course I can't make you. As yet you're your own
master. If you choose to go to this silly meeting and then to drink
gin and water and to smoke bad tobacco till all hours at the Dragon,
and you in the dangerous state you are at present, I can't help
it. I don't suppose that anything I could do now, that is quite
immediately, would enable me to put you under fitting restraint."

"Put me where?" Then Mr. Tappitt looked at his wife with a look that
was intended to annihilate her, for the time being,--seeing that no
words that he could speak had any such effect,--and he hurried out of
the room without staying to wash his hands or brush his hair before
he went off to preside at the meeting.

Mrs. Tappitt remained where she was for about half an hour and then
descended among her daughters.

"Isn't papa going to dine at home?" said Augusta.

"No, my dear; your papa is going to dine with some friends of Mr.
Hart's, the candidate who was beaten."

"And has he settled anything about the brewery?" Cherry asked.

"No; not as yet. Your papa is very much troubled about it, and I fear
he is not very well. I suppose he must go to this electioneering
dinner. When gentlemen take up that sort of thing, they must go on
with it. And as they wish your father to preside over the petition, I