“Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut,” she answered, laughing with a little twinkle through her tears. “She is a very beautiful woman, and therefore what she thinks must be right. I wish you would show me your poem after Mr Pugsley.”
“What poem? But all that stuff is over. I have burnt everything I ever wrote.”
“What a misanthrope you have become. But I don’t wonder. Am I to go now?”
“You are keeping me from my tea.”
“Won’t you let me serve it for you?”
“I serve myself; and I intend to for the future.”
“There is a story—did you ever read it?—of a shepherd who plucked a flower in a field, and brought it home and put it in water; and every night the flower turned into a beautiful girl, who swept and dusted his room for him, and set his meal, and was a flower again by the time he came down. But one night he caught her, and after that she had to remain a woman and serve him.”
“Thank you. But I don’t see the point, for I haven’t plucked you, and I don’t think you beautiful. You had better go. What would Lady Skene say?”
“I am my own mistress. Lady Skene can say what she likes. Do let me wait on you.”
A sudden mutiny of retaliation seized upon me. What did it matter? I felt quite hard and cold to the girl. “Very well,” I said, and sat down.