Giacomo, however, was very determined, notwithstanding his affection for his daughter, and disagreeable scenes took place between them.  She showed her displeasure in a thousand ways, and was positively rude to Mrs. Brooks when she invited Miriam to her house.

Giacomo had a sister, a Mrs. Dabb, who lived in London.  She had married a provision dealer in the Borough, and he employed not only a staff of assistants, but a couple of clerks.  Mrs. Dabb, oddly enough, was a fair-haired woman, with blue eyes and a rosy complexion.  She had rather a wide, plump face, and wore her hair in ringlets.  She lived at the shop, but she had a drawing-room over it with a circular table in the middle, and round it lay the “Keepsake” and “Friendship’s Offering,” in red silk, with Mrs. Hemans’ and Mr. Montgomery’s poetry.  Into these she occasionally looked, and refreshed herself by comparing her intellect with that of the female kind generally.  She desired above everything not to be considered commonplace, believed in love at first sight, was not altogether unfavourable to elopements, carefully repressed any tendency to unnecessary order, wore a loose dressing-gown all the morning, had her breakfast in bed, let her hair stray a little over her face, cultivated a habit of shaking it off and pushing it back with her fingers, and generally went as far to be thought a little “wild” as was possible for the wife of a respectable, solid, eminently British, close-fisted Borough tradesman.  Nevertheless she had a huge appetite, and always had ham or sausages for tea.  Giacomo she despised, on the ground that his occupation was so limited, that it contracted the imagination, and that he did not “live in the metropolis, but vegetated in a country town.”  She consequently very seldom visited Cowfold, and very seldom wrote to her brother.  Giacomo, however, thought it his duty to tell his sister of his approaching marriage; and Mrs. Dabb, who was endowed with great curiosity, replied that, if it was quite agreeable, she would come to Cowfold for two or three days to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Brooks and obtain a change of air, as she had suffered somewhat from feelings of languor of late and a little fever on the nerves.  Accordingly she came, and in a short time saw what was the state of affairs between Miriam and her father.  She rather liked Miriam, chiefly for her defects; and as Giacomo had been a little freer than usual with his sister one evening, and had expressed his fears that Miriam and Mrs. Brooks would not agree, Mrs. Dabb gave him some advice.

“Miriam, my dear Giacomo, is a bit of a genius, untamed and irregular, reminding me something of myself.”

Giacomo did not much believe in untamed irregular genius.  It was certainly of no use in clockmaking.

“Well, what then?”

“I should say that she suffers through limitation of her sphere.  No suffering like that, Giacomo.  Ah me!”

Mrs. Dabb shook back her hair, and put both her hands to her forehead.