“Now, Gerald, that’s where I hate you. You don’t know what it is to pity the weak.”
“Woman’s job. So you wish I’d taken a hundred pounds a year from him. Did you ever hear such blasted cheek? Marry us—he, you, and me—a hundred pounds down and as much annual—he, of course, to pry into all we did, and we to kowtow and eat dirt-pie to him. If that’s Mr. Rickety Elliot’s idea of a soldier and an Englishman, it isn’t mine, and I wish I’d had a horse-whip.”
She was roaring with laughter. “You’re babies, a pair of you, and you’re the worst. Why couldn’t you let the little silly down gently? There he was puffing and sniffing under my window, and I thought he’d insulted you. Why didn’t you accept?”
“Accept?” he thundered.
“It would have taken the nonsense out of him for ever. Why, he was only talking out of a book.”
“More fool he.”
“Well, don’t be angry with a fool. He means no harm. He muddles all day with poetry and old dead people, and then tries to bring it into life. It’s too funny for words.”
Gerald repeated that he could not stand unhealthiness.
“I don’t call that exactly unhealthy.”
“I do. And why he could give the money’s worse.”