'How much will it cost to buy everything, do you think?' Anna asked.
'Beatrice, Anna is inquiring how much it will cost to buy her trousseau, and the house-linen. What do you say?'
'Oh!' Beatrice replied, without any hesitation, 'a couple of hundred at least.'
Mrs. Sutton, reading Anna's face, smiled reassuringly. 'Nonsense, Bee! I dare say you could do it on a hundred with care, Anna.'
'Why should Anna want to do it with care?' Beatrice asked curtly.
Anna went straight across the road to her father, and asked him for a hundred pounds of her own money. She had not spoken to him, save under necessity, since the evening spent at the Suttons'.
'What's afoot now?' he questioned savagely.
'I must buy things for the wedding--clothes and things, father.'
'Ay! clothes! clothes! What clothes dost want? A few pounds will cover them.'
'There'll be all the linen for the house.'
'Linen for---- It's none thy place for buy that.'
'But I've asked Mrs. Sutton, and she says it is.'
'What business an' ye for go blabbing thy affairs all over Bosley? I say it isna' thy place for buy linen, and let that be sufficient. Go and get dinner. It's nigh on twelve now.'
That evening, when Agnes had gone to bed, she resumed the struggle.
'Father, I must have that hundred pounds. I really must. I mean it.'
'I'd advise thee to tak' care o' thy tongue, my lass. _Thou means it_!'
'But you needn't give it me all at once,' she pursued.
'I shanna' give it thee. It's Henry's place for buy th' house-linen.'
'Father, it isn't.' Her voice broke, but only for an instant. 'I'm asking you for my own money. You seem to want to make me miserable just before my wedding.'
'I wish to God thou 'dst never seen Henry Mynors. It's given thee pride and made thee undutiful.'
Her calm insistence maddened him. Jumping up from his chair, he stamped out of the room, and she heard him strike a match in his office. Presently he returned, and threw angrily on to the table in front of her a cheque-book and pass-book. The deposit-book she had always kept herself for convenience of paying into the bank.
'Here,' he said scornfully, 'tak' thy traps and ne'er speak to me again. I wash my hands of ye. Tak' 'em and do what ye'n a mind. Chuck thy money into th' cut[1] for aught I care.'