"Lord Doughton!" exclaimed Mary. "Why, Sister Eliza says that he is the largest landed proprietor in England since his marriage with that heiress whose estates adjoined his."
"Sister Eliza is quite right," said Susan. "She makes it her business to keep a registry of all that concerns the great landed proprietors. Lord Doughton has been married eleven years; he has three children; the eldest is a boy of ten, a cripple. Think of that, no less than three to get rid of. Aren't you jealous?"
"But you don't mean that a child as old as that has to be—to be—"
"But of course I do," interrupted Susan sharply, then continued with her usual heartless flippant tones. "I'll tell you what it is, my girl, the sooner you get the rest of this sentimentality out of you, the better. It's sickening."
"Surely there is a great distinction between removing babies just born, who have not really begun to live, and killing big boys and men."
Susan laughed.
"Bless me, here's a fine moral distinction! What is the difference pray, Miss Casuist? But turn off here, across the grass. If we are going to talk of these things we had better go where there is no chance of eaves-dropping. Our conversation would rather surprise that shabby-looking old person there if he overheard it, wouldn't it? Let's go and ask him what is the latest age at which it is justifiable to put away a human being for the public good."
"For God's sake, Susan, let us talk seriously!" Mary said.
"For whose sake? don't know him; but for your sake I'll be sober for a little time as you hate joviality; you'll be jovial enough though when you are as old as I am, and have gone through as much. It's by joviality people who have suffered plenty make up for it when it's all over. You'll find that out. People who have lived untroubled lives are seldom jovial."
They walked on in silence a short distance, then Mary after looking around her said: