'The fit answer to that would be, "It is very pretty," as the Cockney said to Coleridge at Lodore.'
'So I have converted a Stoneborough fungus!'
'What! to say the sea is glorious? A grand conversion!'
'To find anything superior to Minster Street.'
'Ah, you are but half reclaimed! You are a living instance that there is no content unless one has begun life as a fungus.'
She was startled by his change of tone. 'True, Ethel. Content might have been won, if there had been resolution to begin without it.'
'I beg your pardon,' she faltered, 'I ought not to have said it. I forgot there was such a cause.'
'Cause—you know nothing about it.'
She was silent, distressed, dismayed, fearing that she had spoken wrongly, and had either mistaken or been misunderstood.
'Tell me, Ethel,' he presently said, 'what can you know of what made me a wanderer?'