"Only as you are practical and I am vague, I don't doubt that everything will fall into your hands before five years are over, and that I shall have to be told whether I can afford to buy a new book, and when I am to ask all the gentry to dinner."
"Now you are laughing at me because I shall know so little about anything."
"Come, dear; let us get over the stile and go on for another field, or we shall never get round the park." Then she jumped over after him, just touching his hand. "I was not laughing at you at all. I don't in the least doubt that in a very little time you will know everything about everything."
"I am so much afraid."
"You needn't be. I know you well enough for that. But suppose I had taken such a one as that young woman who was here with my poor cousin. Oh, heavens!"
"Perhaps you ought to have done so."
"I thank the Lord that hath delivered me."
"You ought,—you ought to have chosen some lady of high standing," said Mary, thinking with ineffable joy of the stately dame who was not to come to Bragton. "Do you know what I was thinking only the other day about it?—that you had gone up to London to look for some proper sort of person."
"And how did you mean to receive her?"
"I shouldn't have received her at all. I should have gone away. You can't do it now."