“Well? Why don’t you go on?” he then asked, turning rather irritably on Stephen Blackpool.

“I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this woman.” Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having received a moral shock.

“What do you mean?” said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against the chimneypiece. “What are you talking about? You took her for better for worse.”

“I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear ’t nommore. I ha’ lived under ’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and comforting words o’ th’ best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha’ gone battering mad.”

“He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear, sir,” observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the immorality of the people.