Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for the purpose.
“My roses,” he said when he came back, “take care of mama. She is poorly today. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home.”
“That bad man!” said the Comedy daughter.
“At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers, looking at the blue sky,” Laura complained.
“And when the smell of hay was in the air!” said Arethusa.
“It showed a want of poetry in the man,” Mr. Skimpole assented, but with perfect good humour. “It was coarse. There was an absence of the finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great offence,” he explained to us, “at an honest man—”
“Not honest, papa. Impossible!” they all three protested.
“At a rough kind of fellow—a sort of human hedgehog rolled up,” said Mr. Skimpole, “who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we borrowed a couple of armchairs. We wanted a couple of armchairs, and we hadn’t got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man who had got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them, and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back. He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out his mistake. I