"Perhaps; but then the sheep with the flowery pattern down their backs don't look like sheep, and as for the beef, why, you can't connect the joints with any part of the animal. At least, I can't, and I don't believe you can, either. Now what part of the beast is an aitchbone?"
Paul set the question aside by proposing a canter, and by the time that was over he was quite ready to be sentimental; for Alice looked well on horseback in a sort of willowy, graceful fashion, which made the pastime seem superabundantly feminine.
Still, the subject had a knack of cropping up again and again; and once, when she had excused herself for some aspersion by saying, good-naturedly, that it was a mere matter of association, and that she was of the cat kind, liking those things to which she was accustomed, he had taken her up short by saying she would have to get accustomed to Gleneira.
"Shall I?" she asked. "Somehow, I don't think we shall live there very much. It is nice enough for six weeks' shooting; but, even then, the damp spotted some of my dresses."
"You are getting plenty of new ones at any rate," retorted Paul, for the room was littered with chiffons.
She raised her pretty eyebrows. "Oh, these are only patterns. I always send for them when I'm away from town. It is almost as good as shopping. But I don't mean to buy much now. I shall wait for the winter sales. They are such fun, and I like getting my money's worth--though, of course, father gives me as much as I want. Still, a bargain is a bargain, isn't it?"
Paul acquiesced, but the conversation rankled in his mind. To begin with, it gave him an insight into a certain bourgeoise strain in the young lady's nature, and though he told himself that nothing else was to be expected from Mr. Woodward's daughter--who derived her chief charm from the fact that her father had made bargains and got his money's worth--that did not make its presence any more desirable. And then he could not escape the reflection that he was a bargain, and that the whole family into which he was marrying would make a point of having their money's worth.
He would have realised this still more clearly if he could have seen one of the daily letters which Mrs. Woodward, with praiseworthy regularity, wrote to her lord and master in London, for it is a sort of shibboleth of the married state that those in it should write to each other every day whether they have anything to say or not.
"Alice," she wrote, "is so sensible and seems quite content. At one time I feared a slight entanglement with Jack, but Lady George has been most kind and taken her to all the best places, which is, of course, what we have a right to expect. By the way, there is an Irish member here--O'Flanagin, or something like that--and he declares the Land League will spread to the West Highlands. So you must be sure and tie up the money securely, as it does not seem quite a safe investment."
Mr. Woodward, on receiving this missive, swore audibly, asserting that the devil might take him if he knew of any investment which could be called safe in the present unsettled state of the markets! For his visit to Gleneira, where, as he angrily put it, telegrams came occasionally and the post never--had somehow been the beginning of one of those streaks of real ill-luck which defy the speculator. The result being that Mr. Woodward generally left his office in the city poorer by some thousands than he had entered it in the morning, and though he knew his own fortune to be beyond the risk of actual poverty, it altered his outlook upon life, and threatened his credit as a successful financier.