‘—How can you talk about their managing their little means? My poor dear fellow! The idea of his managing hundreds! And the sweet pretty creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa Meagles! Don’t!’
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, gravely, ‘I am sorry to admit, then, that Henry certainly does anticipate his means.’
‘My dear good man—I use no ceremony with you, because we are a kind of relations;—positively, Mama Meagles,’ exclaimed Mrs Gowan cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for the first time, ‘a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this world none of us can have everything our own way.’
This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with all good breeding that, so far, he had been brilliantly successful in his deep designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that she dwelt upon it; repeating ‘Not everything. No, no; in this world we must not expect everything, Papa Meagles.’
‘And may I ask, ma’am,’ retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened in colour, ‘who does expect everything?’
‘Oh, nobody, nobody!’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘I was going to say—but you put me out. You interrupting Papa, what was I going to say?’
Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles while she thought about it; a performance not tending to the cooling of that gentleman’s rather heated spirits.
‘Ah! Yes, to be sure!’ said Mrs Gowan. ‘You must remember that my poor fellow has always been accustomed to expectations. They may have been realised, or they may not have been realised—’
‘Let us say, then, may not have been realised,’ observed Mr Meagles.
The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it off with her head and her fan, and pursued the tenor of her way in her former manner.