Harry looked up, half impatient, half amused.
“Oh, Arthur, don’t be so trying,” he said. “It really rests with you.”
“I’d much sooner somebody settled for me,” said Arthur.
“But they won’t; speak, sheep,” said Miss Fortescue.
The chair in which Arthur sat creaked, and he struggled to his feet.
“I’m not good at speaking,” he said; “but if you insist—well, it’s just this. Harry, you’re a brick to suggest that we should all live here, but I think you’re wrong about it. In the first place, we’re poor, and if you keep Morton open we shall be all tied here, and we sha’n’t be able to fill the house with people, and we shall not be able to keep up the shooting; and here we shall be with this great shell over our heads, like bluebottles or some other mean insect which lives in palaces. In the second place, you will probably marry, and that will cramp you still further. In the third—this is from my own point of view, purely—if I live here, I know perfectly well that, with the best intentions in the world, on wet mornings when I don’t want to go out, and on fine ones when I do, I shall persuade myself that I am far from well, and not go to Wroxton and the brewery. Fourthly, you yourself will miss not being in London horribly. You’d bore yourself to death here. But you’re a brick for suggesting it. And—and that’s all.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“So the sheep has spoken,” said Jeannie. “Well done, sheep. But I thought you said you were wholly indifferent?”
“I know I did. But you drove me into a corner.”
Miss Fortescue looked at Arthur approvingly.