Did you find her open to persuasion, sir?
Did she say 'Yes ?'" John Jago kept his temper.
"If you must have your joke, Mr.Silas," he said, quietly and firmly, "be pleased to joke on some other subject.

You are quite wrong, sir, in what you suppose to have passed between the young lady and me." Silas turned about, and addressed himself ironically to the three laborers.
"You hear him, boys?
He can't tell the truth, try him as you may.

He wasn't making love to Naomi in the garden last night--oh dear, no! He has had one wife already; and he knows better than to take the yoke on his shoulders for the second time!" Greatly to my surprise, John Jago met this clumsy jesting with a formal and serious reply.
"You are quite right, sir," he said.

"I have no intention of marrying for the second time.

What I was saying to Miss Naomi doesn't matter to you.