"In the suburbs," said the Duke, "we will take some nice house and call it the Chateau de Montvillier with a nice garden——"
"And a nice coachhouse and hot and cold water," she went on icily, "with a month at Margate every summer and a round of local pantomimes every winter—thank you."
"As for myself," said the Duke dreamily, "I shall stand for the Board of Guardians——"
"What!"
"Board of Guardians," said the Duke firmly, "it has been one of my life's dreams: in far-away San Pio in my cow punching days, when I used to lie out on the prairie, all alone, with the great stars glittering and the unbroken solitude of the wilderness about me, that was the thought that comforted me; the whispered hope that buoyed me up. To be a guardian! The trees in their rustling murmured the word, the far-off howl of the prairie dog was, to my fevered imagination, the voice of the chairman calling the Board to order."
"But seriously?" she pleaded, "please, please be serious."
"I am serious," said the indignant Duke, "Brockley is nature, and all that pertains to Brockley is nature. Why even Tuppy sees that! When I told him that the Mayor didn't wear robes and didn't have a mace bearer, the poor chap nearly wept for joy, he's staying——"
"I am not interested in what Tuppy thinks," she said coldly, "or what Tuppy has planned. What interests me is the fact that I have no intention whatever of spending my life in the suburbs, so there."
I wonder if "so there" an expression that a lady, who had at one time lived in Portland Place, would use?
I wonder——