“I don’t know. I notice them——”
“Capital!” she cried, clapping her hands; “that’s what I wanted to know. Well then, what would all this, you and I and your great trouble, mean to them?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your questions, my answers? Nothing.”
He coloured, and looked down. “What does it mean?” he repeated, and as he said it he could not remember what he had come for, or what he had said, and while she was answering he tried desperately to re-establish himself.
He said, “And you do not know what I must go through before I feel like Bailey?”
“A little evil day by day, that makes everything grow.”
“Yes, that is what I wanted to know,” he said, breathlessly.
“Listen then, it’s all that makes the difference between a gentleman and a fool. Never do evil to good people, they always forgive it, and that is nasty.”
“But what about all these things that people talk of and I do not understand?”