“All right, love: please don’t look so superior; and save up your sarcasm for the wicked Henry. As for my advice, here it is in a nutshell: get the girl out of his way, and then perhaps he will begin to think of the other one, to whom you are so anxious to tie him up, though I can’t say that I consider the connection desirable myself.” Having delivered himself thus, Edward put his hands into his pockets and strolled off in a huff. Although he was not thin-skinned, to tell the truth Ellen’s slings and arrows sometimes irritated this young man. “I wonder if she will always go on like this after we are married?” he thought to himself. “Perhaps she’ll get worse. What’s that about a green and a dry tree? She’s dry enough anyway when she likes, and sometimes I think that I am pretty green. By George! if I believed that she always meant to keep up this game of snubs and sharp answers, fond as I am of her, I think I would cut the show before it is too late. There are a good many things that I don’t like about it; I sometimes suspect that the whole set of them are pretty well broke, and I don’t want to marry into a bankrupt family. Then that fellow Henry is an infernal prig, not but what I would be careful to see precious little of him. I wonder why Ellen is so anxious that he should take up with the Levinger girl? From all I can find out the father is a disreputable old customer, who made a low marriage, and whom everybody declines to know. It is shady, deuced shady,” and, filled with these gloomy musings, Edward made his way into the dining-room to lunch. Here Ellen, who in the interval had bethought herself that she was showing a little too much of the iron hand, received him graciously enough: indeed, she was so affectionate and pleasant in her manner, that before the afternoon was over Edward’s doubts were dispelled, and he forgot that he had that morning contemplated a step so serious as the breaking off of his engagement. However coarsely he might express himself, Ellen had wit enough to see that Edward’s advice was of the soundest. Certainly it was desirable that Joan Haste should be got rid of, but how was this to be brought about? She could not tell her to go, nor could she desire Mrs. Gillingwater to order her out of the house. Ellen pondered the question deeply, and after sleeping a night over it she came to the conclusion that she would take Mr. Levinger into her counsel. She knew him to be a shrewd and resourceful man; she knew, moreover—for her father had repeated the gist of the conversation between them—that he was bent upon the marriage of Henry with his daughter; and lastly she knew that he was the landlord of the Crown and Mitre, in which the Gillingwaters lived. Surely, therefore, if anyone could get rid of Joan, Mr. Levinger would be able to do so.