"It obviously depends on what sort of emotion I should find when I walked there," said Jack. "There are some emotions that I would walk further to avoid."
"Oh, of course, the common emotions, 'the litany things,' as Dodo calls them," said Miss Grantham, dismissing them lightly with a wave of her hand. "But what I like is a nice little sad emotion that makes you feel so melancholy you don't know what to do with yourself. I don't mean deaths and that sort of thing, but seeing someone you love being dreadfully unhappy and extremely prosperous at the same time."
"But it's rather expensive for the people you love," said Jack.
"Oh, we must all make sacrifices," said Miss Grantham. "It's quite worth while if you gratify your friends. I would not mind being acutely unhappy, if I could dissect my own emotions, and have them photographed and sent round to my friends."
"What a charming album we might all make," said Lord Ledgers. "Page 1. Miss Grantham's heart in the acute stage. Page 2. Mortification setting in. Page 3. The lachrymatory gland permanently closed by a tenor voice."
"Poor old Chesterford," thought Jack, "this is rather hard on him."
But Chesterford was not to be pitied just now, for Dodo was devoting her exclusive conversation to him in defiance of her duties as hostess. She was recounting to him how she had spent every moment of his absence at the station. Certainly she was keeping it up magnificently at present.
"And Mrs. Vivian comes to-morrow," she was saying. "You like her, don't you, Chesterford? You must be awfully good to her, and take her to see all the drunken idlers in the village. That will be dear of you. It's just what she likes. She has sort of passion for drunken cabmen, who stamp on their wives. If you stamped on me a little every evening, she would cultivate you to any extent. Shall I lie down on the floor for you to begin?"
Chesterford leant back in his chair in a kind of ecstasy.
"Ah, Dodo," he said, "you are wonderfully good to me. But I must go and write two notes before dinner; and you must amuse your guests. I am very glad Jack has come. He is a very good chap. But don't make him an apostle."