“Their troubles are over at last, poor children; and really I think they’ve all behaved very well. And yet——”
“Yes?”
“I should have thought Mary and Mr. Ashforth so suited to one another. Well, well, the heart’s an unaccountable thing—to an old spinster, anyhow.”
“You’re right, Miss Bussey. Take my wife and me. You wouldn’t have thought we should have hit it off, would you? First year I knew her I hardly dared to speak to her—used to mug up Browning and—(Sir Roger here referred to an eminent living writer) and chaps like that, before I went to see her, you know. No use! I bored her to death. At last I chucked it up.”
“Well?”
“And I went one day and talked about the Grand National for half an hour by the clock. Well, she asked me to come again next day, and I went, and told her all about the last burlesque and—and so on, you know. And then I asked her to marry me.”
“And she said ‘Yes’?”
“Not directly. She said there was an impassable gulf between us—an utter want of sympathy in our tastes and an irreconcilable difference of intellectual outlook.”
“Dear me! Didn’t that discourage you?”
“I said I didn’t care a dash; she was the only girl I ever cared for (all right, Miss Bussey, don’t laugh), and I’d have any outlook she liked. I said I knew I was an ass, but I thought I knew a pretty girl when I saw one, and I’d go away if she’d show me a prettier one.”