"But where is it to come from if you're going to rush openmouthed into the lion's jaws in this way? I've done my duty by you, T., and no man nor yet no woman can say anything to the contrary. And if it was myself only I'd see myself on the brink of starvation before I'd say a word; but I can't see those poor girls brought to beggary without telling you what everybody in Baslehurst is talking about; and I can't see you, T., behaving in such a way and sit by and hold my tongue." "Behave in what way? Haven't I worked like a horse? Do you mean to tell me that I am to give up my business, and my position, and everything I have in the world, and go away because a young scoundrel comes to Baslehurst and tells me that he wants to have my brewery? I tell you what, Margaret, if you think I'm that sort of man, you don't know me yet." "I don't know about knowing you, T." "No; you don't know me." "If you come to that, I know very well that I have been deceived. I didn't want to speak of it, but now I must. I have been made to believe for these last twenty years that the brewery was all your own, whereas it now turns out that you've only got a share in it, and for aught I can see, by no means the best share. Why wasn't I told all that before?" "Woman!" shouted Mr. Tappitt. "Yes; woman indeed! I suppose I am a woman, and therefore I'm to have no voice in anything. Will you answer me one question, if you please? Are you going to that man, Sharpit?" "Yes, I am." "Then, Mr. Tappitt, I shall consult my brothers." Mrs. Tappitt's brothers were grocers in Plymouth; men whom Mr. Tappitt had never loved. "They mayn't hold their heads quite as high as you do,--or rather as you used to do when people thought that the establishment was all your own; but such as it is nobody can turn them out of their shop in the Market-place. If you are going to Sharpit, I shall consult them." "You may consult the devil, if you like it." "Oh, oh! very well, Mr. Tappitt. It's clear enough that you're not yourself any longer, and that somebody must take up your affairs and manage them for you. If you'll follow my advice you'll stay at home this evening and take a dose of physic and see Dr. Haustus quietly in the morning." "I shall do nothing of the kind." "Very well. Of course I can't make you. As yet you're your own master. If you choose to go to this silly meeting and then to drink gin and water and to smoke bad tobacco till all hours at the Dragon, and you in the dangerous state you are at present, I can't help it. I don't suppose that anything I could do now, that is quite immediately, would enable me to put you under fitting restraint." "Put me where?" Then Mr. Tappitt looked at his wife with a look that was intended to annihilate her, for the time being,--seeing that no words that he could speak had any such effect,--and he hurried out of the room without staying to wash his hands or brush his hair before he went off to preside at the meeting.