Yes; for all her softness and
femininity, she could freeze iron-hard at the
suspicion of baseness; and I have seen the blood flush
from her white cap to her lace collar when she has heard
of an act of meanness.
Well, she had heard some details about the
Cullingworths which displeased her when I first knew
them. Then came the smash-up at Avonmouth, and my mother
liked them less and less. She was averse to my joining
them in Bradfield, and it was only by my sudden movement
at the end that I escaped a regular prohibition. When I
got there, the very first question she asked (when I told
her of their prosperity) was whether they had paid their
Avonmouth creditors. I was compelled to answer that they
had not. In reply she wrote imploring me to come away,
and saying that, poor as our family was, none of them had
ever fallen so low as to enter into a business
partnership with a man of unscrupulous character and
doubtful antecedents. I answered that Cullingworth spoke
sometimes of paying his creditors, that Mrs. Cullingworth
was in favour of it also, and that it seemed to me to be
unreasonable to expect that I should sacrifice a good
opening on account of things with which I had no
connection. I assured her that if Cullingworth did
anything from then onwards which seemed to me
dishonourable, I would disassociate myself from him, and
I mentioned that I had already refused to adopt some of
his professional methods.
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