"Don't think of anything so—unnatural," he said.
She raised her eyes, and looked at him with surprise.
"Is it unnatural for a woman—a girl—to earn her own living?" she said.
"Yes," he said emphatically. "Women were made for men to work for, not to toil themselves."
Nell laughed, in simple mockery of the sentiment.
"What nonsense! As if we were dolls or something to be wrapped up in lavender! Why, half the women in Shorne Mills work! You see them driving their donkeys down to the beach for sand—haven't you seen them with bags on each side?—and doing washing, and making butter and going to market. Why, I should have to work if anything happened to mamma. At least, she has often said so. She has—what is it?—oh, an annuity or something of the kind; and if she died, Dick and I would have to 'face the world,' as she puts it."
He said nothing, but looked at her through the thin blue cloud of his cigarette. She looked so sweet, so girlish, so—yes, so helpless—lying there in the sunlight, one brown paw supporting her shapely head, the other—after the manner of girls—dabbling in the water. A pang of compassion smote him.
"It's a devil of a world," he muttered, almost to himself.
"Do you think so?" she said, with surprise. "I don't. At any rate, I don't think so this afternoon."
"Why this afternoon?" he asked, half curiously.