"Why wouldn't it?"
"You can see that for yourself, can't you? You've come entirely out of that life and you couldn't go back to it."
"I don't see why I couldn't if I wanted to?" she threw out at him with sudden violence.
Clearly, as his mother had said, she was lacking in reverence, yet he couldn't agree that she would never become exactly a lady. Not with that high-bred poise of the head and those small, exquisite hands!
"Well, in the first place, I don't believe you'd ever want to," he said calmly, "and in the second place, if you ever did such a thing, my little weather-vane, you'd regret it in ten minutes."
"If I did it, I don't believe I'd ever regret it," was her amazing rejoinder.
Stupefied yet dauntless, he returned to the charge.
"You're talking sheer nonsense, you silly girl, and you know it," he said. "If you were to go back to Old Church to marry the miller, you'd be sorry before you got up to the altar."
"I'm not going back there to marry him," she persisted stubbornly, "but
I don't' believe if I were to do it, I'd ever regret it."
"You think you'd be satisfied to give up ten thousand a year and settle down to raising chickens for a living?"