Really? That’s a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that. Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two hours when she has them bad. By night, too.
“Are you sure you’re quite so much as six foot three?” asks Mr. Bucket. “Begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?”
Not a doubt about it.
“You’re so well put together that I shouldn’t have thought it. But the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it’s moonlight, though?”
Oh, yes. When it’s moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course! Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.
“I suppose you ain’t in the habit of walking yourself?” says Mr. Bucket. “Not much time for it, I should say?”
Besides which, Mercury don’t like it. Prefers carriage exercise.
“To be sure,” says Mr. Bucket. “That makes a difference. Now I think of it,” says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at the blaze, “she went out walking the very night of this business.”
“To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way.”
“And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it.”