"I wouldna' ha' minded," he said, savagely--"I wouldna' ha' minded going
into a house a bit bigger, but--"

"Nothing is big enough for me except Wilbraham Hall," she said.

He said nothing. He was furious. It was her birthday, and he had given
her six-and-twenty pounds--ten shillings a week for a year--and she had
barely kissed him. And now, instantly after that amazing and mad
generosity, she had the face to look cross because he would not buy
Wilbraham Hall! It was inconceivable; it was unutterable. So he said
nothing.

"Why shouldn't you, after all?" she resumed. "You've got an income of
nearly five thousand a year." (Now he hated her for the mean manner in
which she had wormed out of him secrets that previously he had shared
with no one.) "You don't spend the twentieth part of it. What are you
going to do with it? _What are you going to do with it_? You're getting
an old man." (Cold horrors!) "You can't take it with you when you leave
the Five Towns, you know. Whom shall you leave your money to? You'll
probably die worth a hundred thousand pounds, at this rate. You'll leave
it to me, of course. Because there's nobody else for you to leave it to.
Why can't you use it now, instead of wasting it in old stockings?"

"I bank my money, wench," he hissingly put in.

"Old stockings!" she repeated, loudly. "We could live splendidly at
Wilbraham Hall on two thousand a year, and you would still be saving
nearly three thousand a year."

He said nothing.