I know from Atkinson,
who has been in Leeds, that he is a traveller to some house in the wine
trade. And yet he comes here, the bullying rascal! fretting the poor
lass to skin and bone with pretending he can take the law of her for not
living with him, and that after all his ill-usage.'

'I am so sorry,' returned Audrey, and her tone said more than her words.
'He is a bad man, a thoroughly heartless and bad man--everyone knows
that; and she must never go back to him. I hope you told him so.'

'Ay, I did,' with a touch of gruffness; 'I found him bullying, and poor
Prissy crying her eyes out, and looking ready to drop--for she is afraid
of him--and I just took down my big stick. "Joe," I said, as he began
blustering about her being his true and lawful wife, "you just drop that
and listen to me: if she is your wife, she is my daughter, our only
one--for never chick nor child had we beside Priscilla--and she is going
to stop along with me, law or no law."

'"I'll claim my own. There's two to that bargain, father-in-law," he
says, with a sneer; for, you see, he was turning a bit nasty.

'"And you'll claim something else as well, son-in-law!" I replied,
getting a good grip of the stick; for my blood was up, and I would have
felled him to the ground with all the pleasure in life, only the girl
got between us.

'"No, father--no violence!" she screeches out. "Don't make things worse
for poor, unhappy me. Joe is not worth your getting into trouble on his
account. Go along with you, Joe, and Heaven forgive you; but horses
wouldn't drag me under your roof again after the way you have treated
me."

'Well, I suppose we made it too hot for him, ma'am, for he soon beat a
retreat. Joe was always a coward. I would have hurried him out with a
kick, but I thought it better to be prudent; and Priscilla went and had
a fit of hysterics in her own room, and she has been looking mortal bad,
poor lass! ever since.'

'I wish we could save her these trying scenes, Mr. O'Brien; they get on
her nerves.'

'Ah, that is what her mother said! "Prissy will never have a day's
health if we can't hinder Joe from coming to plague her"--I remember my
Susan saying that. Why, it was half for Prissy's sake we gave up the
shop. "What is the good of filling our purse, Tom, when we have plenty
for ourselves and Priscilla!" she was always saying to me. But there, I
was fond of the shop--it is no use denying it--and it takes a special
sort of education to f