“But I do long to hear,” she said, “what the men say in the smoke room of ‘Ye Ramme Inne.’ Is it quite untellable?”
“Quite!” he laughed.
“What a pity! See what a cruel thing it is to be a woman, Leslie: we never know what men say in smoke rooms, while you read in your novels everything a woman ever uttered. It is a shame! George, you are a wretch, you should tell me. I do envy you——.”
“What do you envy me, exactly?” he asked laughing always at her whimsical way.
“Your smoke room. The way you see life—or the way you hear it, rather.”
“But I should have thought you saw life ten times more than me,” he replied.
“I! I only see manners—good manners and bad manners. You know ‘manners maketh a man.’ That’s when a woman’s there. But you wait awhile, you’ll see.”
“When shall I see?” asked George, flattered and interested.
“When you have made the fortune you talked about,” she replied.
He was uplifted by her remembering the things he had said.