A House to Let Read Online Free

their master scorned all petty saving
in aught that conduced to comfort; while he amused himself by following
out all his accustomed habits and individual ways in defiance of what any
of his new neighbours might think.
    His wife was a pretty, gentle woman, of suitable age and character. He
was forty-two, she thirty-five. He was loud and decided; she soft and
yielding. They had two children or rather, I should say, she had two;
for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs. Openshaw's child by Frank
Wilson her first husband. The younger was a little boy, Edwin, who could
just prattle, and to whom his father delighted to speak in the broadest
and most unintelligible Lancashire dialect, in order to keep up what he
called the true Saxon accent.
    Mrs. Openshaw's Christian-name was Alice, and her first husband had been
her own cousin. She was the orphan niece of a sea-captain in Liverpool:
a quiet, grave little creature, of great personal attraction when she was
fifteen or sixteen, with regular features and a blooming complexion. But
she was very shy, and believed herself to be very stupid and awkward; and
was frequently scolded by her aunt, her own uncle's second wife. So when
her cousin, Frank Wilson, came home from a long absence at sea, and first
was kind and protective to her; secondly, attentive and thirdly,
desperately in love with her, she hardly knew how to be grateful enough
to him. It is true she would have preferred his remaining in the first
or second stages of behaviour; for his violent love puzzled and
frightened her. Her uncle neither helped nor hindered the love affair
though it was going on under his own eyes. Frank's step-mother had such
a variable temper, that there was no knowing whether what she liked one
day she would like the next, or not. At length she went to such extremes
of crossness, that Alice was only too glad to shut her eyes and rush
blindly at the chance of escape from domestic tyranny offered her by a
marriage with her cousin; and, liking him better than any one in the
world except her uncle (who was at this time at sea) she went off one
morning and was married to him; her only bridesmaid being the housemaid
at her aunt's. The consequence was, that Frank and his wife went into
lodgings, and Mrs. Wilson refused to see them, and turned away Norah, the
warm-hearted housemaid; whom they accordingly took into their service.
When Captain Wilson returned from his voyage, he was very cordial with
the young couple, and spent many an evening at their lodgings; smoking
his pipe, and sipping his grog; but he told them that, for quietness'
sake, he could not ask them to his own house; for his wife was bitter
against them. They were not very unhappy about this.
    The seed of future unhappiness lay rather in Frank's vehement, passionate
disposition; which led him to resent his wife's shyness and want of
demonstration as failures in conjugal duty. He was already tormenting
himself, and her too, in a slighter degree, by apprehensions and
imaginations of what might befall her during his approaching absence at
sea. At last he went to his father and urged him to insist upon Alice's
being once more received under his roof; the more especially as there was
now a prospect of her confinement while her husband was away on his
voyage. Captain Wilson was, as he himself expressed it, "breaking up,"
and unwilling to undergo the excitement of a scene; yet he felt that what
his son said was true. So he went to his wife. And before Frank went to
sea, he had the comfort of seeing his wife installed in her old little
garret in his father's house. To have placed her in the one best spare
room was a step beyond Mrs. Wilson's powers of submission or generosity.
The worst part about it, however, was that the faithful Norah had to be
dismissed. Her place as housemaid had been filled up; and, even had it
not, she had forfeited Mrs. Wilson's good opinion for ever. She
comforted her young master and mistress by pleasant prophecies of the
time