Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

The line of least resistance
‘Am I not trying all I can?’ asked he, in return. ‘Will you have me? I am
sure you are just the woman – I beg pardon, I mean the lady – for me,
and I would make you a good husband’.
‘I thought everybody knew I was engaged?’ said Grace, scarcely less
amused than astonished.
‘Engaged – whom to?’ asked Humberstone, eagerly.
‘To Henry Martin, who is now with my brothers at the diggings. We have
been engaged for two years and a half, and I never dreamed of you not
knowing it’.
‘Two years and a half! Henry Martin of the Burra! Why, Bless my soul!
who would have thought of such a thing? And you don’t think you could
like me better? I am rich enough, and would cross you in nothing, and
Escott is so anxious to have a lady about the place’. Grace shook her head.
‘Could you speak a good word for me to your sister?’ said Humberstone.
‘If I cannot have you, I should like her next best. She is not engaged to
anybody, I hope’.
‘Which sister do you mean, for it would be awkward if I recommended
you to the wrong one?’ Grace answered, with comic gravity.
‘I mean your tall sister, with the clear blue eyes; the one that sang with
Reginald. I think she would suit me nearly as well as yourself’.
‘Well!’ said Grace, almost laughing outright, ‘I will mention the thing to
Margaret’.
‘Will you beg her to come and see me now?’ quoth the impatient suitor.
‘Only don’t let her know that I asked you for she might not like to wear
your old shoes, you understand’. 56
Clara Morison is undoubtedly the novel in which Spence’s prose most nearly has,
as Kay Daniels has observed, ‘a Jane Austen sparkle and economy’. 57 But the dialogue
in her later novels, even without the humour, is just as telling. Listen to Robert
North, from Tender and True, asking his wife how they managed for money while
55