"It's all very well for you now," she said, "for you have six or seven hundred a year, and you happen to like nothing so much as hitting round balls with pieces of wood and iron. It is an inexpensive taste, and you are lucky to find it amusing. In your position at present you have no calls upon you and no barrack of a house to keep up. But when you are Lord Conybeare you will find how different it is. Besides, you must marry some time, and when you marry you must marry money. Old bachelors are more absurd, if possible, than old spinsters. And goodness knows how ridiculous they are!"
"My sister-in-law is a mercenary woman," remarked Toby. "And aren't we getting on rather quick?"
"Quick!" screamed Kit. "I am painfully trying to drag you a few steps forward, and you say we are getting on quick! Now, Toby, you are twenty-five——"
"Four," said Toby.
"Oh, Toby, you are enough to madden Job! What difference does that make? I choose that you should be twenty-five! All your people marry early; they always did; and it is a most proper thing for a young man to do. Really, young men are getting quite impossible. They won't dance—you aren't dancing; they won't marry—you aren't married; they spend all their lazy, selfish lives in amusing themselves and—and ruining other people."
"It's better to amuse yourself than not to amuse yourself," said Toby. This, as he knew, was a safe draw. If Kit was at home, out she came.
"That is your view. Thank goodness there are other views," said Kit, with extraordinary energy. "Why, for instance, do you suppose that I went down to the wilds of Kensington and opened a bazaar, as I did this afternoon?"
"I can't think," said Toby. "Wasn't it awfully slow?"
He began to grin again.
"Slow? Yes, of course it was slow; but it is one's duty not to mind what is slow," continued Kit rapidly, pumping up moral sentiments with surprising fluency. "Why do you suppose Jack goes to the House whenever there is a Church Bill on? Why do I come and argue with you and quarrel with you like this?"