He will never give
us a penny; I regard that as mathematically proved."
Mrs. Penniman at this point had an inspiration.
"Couldn't you bring a lawsuit against him?" She wondered that this
simple expedient had never occurred to her before.
"I will bring a lawsuit against YOU," said Morris, "if you ask me any
more such aggravating questions. A man should know when he is
beaten," he added, in a moment. "I must give her up!"
Mrs. Penniman received this declaration in silence, though it made
her heart beat a little. It found her by no means unprepared, for
she had accustomed herself to the thought that, if Morris should
decidedly not be able to get her brother's money, it would not do for
him to marry Catherine without it. "It would not do" was a vague way
of putting the thing; but Mrs. Penniman's natural affection completed
the idea, which, though it had not as yet been so crudely expressed
between them as in the form that Morris had just given it, had
nevertheless been implied so often, in certain easy intervals of
talk, as he sat stretching his legs in the Doctor's well-stuffed
armchairs, that she had grown first to regard it with an emotion
which she flattered herself was philosophic, and then to have a
secret tenderness for it. The fact that she kept her tenderness
secret proves, of course, that she was ashamed of it; but she managed
to blink her shame by reminding herself that she was, after all, the
official protector of her niece's marriage.
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