Wrayburn, here, pays. Then I ask him what right has he to do it, and what does he mean by it, and how comes he to be taking such a liberty without my consent, when I am raising myself in the scale of society by my own exertions and Mr. Headstone’s aid, and have no right to have any darkness cast upon my prospects, or any imputation upon my respectability, through my sister?”
The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness, made it a poor one indeed. And yet Bradley Headstone, used to the little audience of a school, and unused to the larger ways of men, showed a kind of exultation in it.
“Now I tell Mr. Eugene Wrayburn,” pursued the boy, forced into the use of the third person by the hopelessness of addressing him in the first, “that I object to his having any acquaintance at all with my sister, and that I request him to drop it altogether. He is not to take it into his head that I am afraid of my sister’s caring for him —”
(As the boy sneered, the Master sneered, and Eugene blew off the feathery ash again.)
—“But I object to it, and that’s enough. I am more important to my sister than he thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise her; she knows that, and she has to look to me for her prospects. Now I understand all this very well, and so does Mr. Headstone. My sister is an excellent girl, but she has some romantic notions; not about such things as your Mr. Eugene Wrayburns, but about the death of my father and other matters of that sort. Mr. Wrayburn encourages those notions to make himself of importance, and so she thinks she ought to be grateful to him, and perhaps even likes to be. Now I don’t choose her to be grateful to him, or to be grateful to anybody but me, except Mr. Headstone. And I tell Mr. Wrayburn that if he don’t take heed of what I say, it will be worse for her. Let him turn that over in his memory, and make sure of it. Worse for her!”