I come to a question that may shorten the business. What do
you mean by the proposal you made just now?'
'What do I mean, Bounderby?'
'By your visiting proposition,' said Bounderby, with an inflexible
jerk of the hayfield.
'I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly
manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here,
which may tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many
respects.'
'To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?' said
Bounderby.
'If you put it in those terms.'
'What made you think of this?' said Bounderby.
'I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is it
asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should aid
in trying to set her right? You have accepted a great charge of
her; for better for worse, for - '
Mr. Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own
words to Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an
angry start.
'Come!' said he, 'I don't want to be told about that.
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