Althea saw that it would be rather funny. 'If you have a hunter I would far rather you hunted here than that you went away to hunt.'
'Perhaps you'd rather I had a horse that couldn't hunt. The hunter would be your gift, of course. I could just go on depending on my friends for a mount, though that would look funny, too, wouldn't it?'
'If you will hunt, I want to give you your hunter.'
'In a sense it will be using your money to do something you disapprove of.' Gerald was smiling at her as though he felt that he was bringing her round to reasonableness. 'Perhaps that's ugly.'
'Please don't speak of the money; mine is yours.'
'That makes me seem all the dingier, I know,' said Gerald, half ruefully, yet still smiling at her. 'I do wish I could give it up, just to please you, but really I can't. You must just shut your eyes and pretend I'm not a brute.'
After this little encounter, which left its mark on Althea's heart, she felt that Gerald ought to be the more willing to yield in other things and to enter into her projects. 'Don't you think, dear,' she said to him a day or two after, when they were walking together, 'don't you think that you ought soon to be thinking of a seat in Parliament? That will be such a large, worthy life for you.'
Gerald, as they walked, was looking from right to left, happily, possessively, over the fields and woods. He brought his attention to her suggestion with a little effort, and then he laughed. 'Good gracious, no! I've no political views.'
'But oughtn't you to have them?'
'You shall provide me with them, dear.'