Still this was nothing—wretchedness was nothing—starvation was nothing—shoelessness was nothing, compared with the want of soap—she could bear anything but dirt. It was the terror of that had kept her from going to London, and now she saw that, in spite of all her efforts, Mr. Sandboys’ obstinacy about his trumpery wickedness would bring upon her those very horrors which she had made so many sacrifices to avoid. She did not care about any of his Great Exhibitions, only all she knew was, that she would rather go through any wickedness than live in the dirt that she could see he was forcing her into. Stay in Hassness she would not; and she had made up her mind, as Mr. Sandboys would not leave it, that she would throw herself on Messrs. Brag and Steal, and trust to them—for they were her father’s lawyers—to make him provide her with a separate and comfortable maintenance. Dearly as she once had loved him, she loved cleanliness more, and it remained for him to say whether they were to continue any longer together in the same wholesome state in which they had lived for thirty long years. And having given vent to her feelings, she seized the bed candlestick and marched indignantly into Elcy’s room, where she declared her resolution to pass the night. Sandboys, in the enthusiasm of his excited feelings and the sad prospect of his threatened widowerhood, would have jumped up and followed her; but again remembering the paucity of his attire, sank back into his chair. In a few minutes it struck him that he had been sitting with his feet in the pail until the water had become as cold as that of the brook into which he had tumbled, and he began to think that, by remaining in his present position, he was perhaps adding another cold to the one he had already caught, in his fatal attempt at theoretical and practical pig-driving.