‘Oh yes! People always do those things in love. Besides, the Sofi hasn’t got a single white hair in her, and you know what that always means!’
‘I can’t make it out! I can’t think how Aunt Jane can be in love with a great man like that. His voice isn’t nice, you know—’
‘Not even as sweet as Bully Bottom’s,’ suggested Gillian.
‘You’re a chit,’ said Jasper, ‘or you’d be superior to the notion of love being indispensable.’
‘When people are so very old,’ said Mysie in a meditative voice, ‘perhaps they can’t; but Aunt Jane is very good—and I thought it was only horrid worldly people that married without love.’
‘Trust your good woman for looking to the main chance,’ said Jasper, who was better read in Trollope and Mrs. Oliphant than his sisters.
‘’Tis not main chance,’ said Gillian. ‘Think of the lots of good she would do! What a recreation room for the girls, and what schools she would set up at Rocca Marina! Depend upon it, it’s for that!’
‘I suppose it is right if Aunt Jane does it,’ said Mysie.
‘Well done, Mysie! So, Aunt Jane is your Pope!’
‘No; she’s the King that can do no wrong,’ said Gillian, laughing.