The lady surveyed him with a long and distrustful glance.
“Have you had any beer this morning?” she asked.
The Duke never took beer—not even in the evening. “None,” he replied with a touch of indignation.
“I wish I was sure of that!” she remarked. The Duke, himself regretfully sure (for the digging had changed his feelings towards beer), wondered at her suspicious disposition. “Well, we shall see. You’re in my daughter’s district. She will come and see you.”
“Vurry good, ma’am,” said the Duke.
“Are you married?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You live alone, then?”
Swiftly the Duke reflected. “I got a brother, ma’am, but ’e do be kind o’—kind o’ weak.”
“A pair of you, I think!” she remarked rather disconcertingly, as she turned and marched off. The Duke returned to his cottage and decided, over a pint of hock and a bottle of seltzer, that he had come out of the interview with much credit.