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Mr Rubb's promised visit was to take place in eight or ten days from the date on which this letter was received. Miss Mackenzie's ears, as I have said, tingled as she read it. In the first place, it gave her a terrible picture of the precarious state of her brother's business. What would he do, he with his wife, and all his children, if things were in such a state as Mr Slow described them?
Should she, however, ever become Mrs Rubb, she would not find the gloves to be there permanently; whereas the eye would remain. But then the gloves were the fault of the one man, whereas the eye was simply the misfortune of the other. And Mr Rubb's hair was very full of perfumed grease, and sat on each side of his head in a conscious arrangement of waviness that was detestable.
It was not very easy for her to tell him what had been Mr Rubb's business. She had no wish to keep anything secret from her cousin, but she did not know how to describe the scene which had just taken place, or how to acknowledge that the man had come there to ask her to marry him. "Does he know anything of this matter of your money?" continued Mr Ball. "Oh yes; he knows it all.
"Has it been Mr Rubb's fault?" "I won't say that; and, indeed, if it has been any man's fault it has been the old man's. I don't want to say a word against the one that you know. Oh, Margaret!" "Don't fret yourself now, Tom." "If you had seven children, would not you fret yourself? And I hardly know how to speak to you about it.
I know that we have already had ever so much of your money, over two thousand pounds; and I fear you will never see it again." "Never mind, Tom; it is yours, with all my heart. Only, Tom, as it is so badly wanted, I would rather it was yours than Mr Rubb's. Could I not do something that would make that share of the building yours?"
Mr Rubb's mode of speaking was pleasant to her; whereas she was by no means sure that she liked Mr Maguire's speech. But Mr Maguire was by profession a gentleman.
Miss Mackenzie having just rejected Mr Rubb's suit, did not feel quite comfortable in giving him a commission to see all her stockings and petticoats packed up and brought away from the lodgings. Indeed, she could give him no commission of the kind, but intimated her intention of writing to the lodging-house keeper.
Early in life he became an invalid; and though he kept his place in Somerset House till he died, the period of his shining in the fashionable world came to a speedy end. Now, at length, we will come to Margaret Mackenzie, the sister, our heroine, who was eight years younger than her brother Walter, and twelve years younger than Mr Rubb's partner.
Now, the French know more about society than any people, and I'm told they have none of it." "I'm sure I can't say," said Miss Baker. "It's given up to them that they've got rid of it altogether," said Mr Rubb. "Who have got rid of what?" asked Miss Todd, who saw that her friend was rather dismayed by the tenor of Mr Rubb's conversation. "The French have got rid of decorum," said Mr Rubb.
It seemed that everything hung upon Samuel Rubb, junior, except the fact that Samuel Rubb's father, who now never went near the place, got more than half the net profits; and the further fact, that the whole thing would come to an end if this payment to old Rubb were stopped.
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