Why should
it take place, and upon such an occasion, they could not for their
lives imagine. The only persons in the family who seemed altogether
indifferent to it were Woodward and his mother, both of whom treated it
with ridicule and contempt.
"It comes before some calamity," observed Mr. Lindsay.
"It comes before a fiddle-stick, Lindsay," replied his wife. "Calamity!
yes; perhaps you may have a headache to-morrow, for which the world must
be prepared by a storm of thunder and lightning, and a shower of blood.
The head that reels over night with an excess of wine and punch will
ache in the morning without a prodigy to foretell it."
"Say what you will," he replied, "I believe the devil had a hand in
it; and I tell you," he added, laughing, "that if you be advised by me,
you'll begin to prepare yourself--'a stitch in time saves nine,' you
know--so look sharp, I say."
"This, Harry," she said, addressing her son, "is the way your mother has
been treated all along; yes, by a brutal and coarse-minded husband, who
pays no attention to anything but his own gross and selfish enjoyments;
but, thank God, I have now some person to protect me.
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