“Oh, I never preached to him,” Grimshaw said; “he had the intelligence to see ...”
“To see that I’m an undesirable woman?” she asked ironically.
“To see, if it’s held under his nose, that it’s profitable and interesting and healthy to do the best for the people that Chance, Providence, whatever it is, has put under him in this world. It helps them; it helps him. He’s got a desire by now to be a good landlord. It’s a languid desire, but it’s as much a part of him as his desire to dress well.”
Etta Stackpole said:
“By gum!”
They were dodging between a huge electric tram and the kerb of a narrow street beside a grim and squalid brewery; they dipped down under a railway arch; they mounted a rise, and ran beside a green, gay with white painted posts and rails, and surrounded by little houses. Etta looked meditatively in front of her with an air as if she were chewing tobacco.
“By thunder, as Clemmy van Husum says,” she brought out at last, “you dry-nursed him till he’s good enough for marrying a little person you’ve kept in a nursery, and she——”
“She takes charge!” Robert Grimshaw said. “She’ll give him personal ambition, or if she doesn’t do that she’ll make him act just as if he had it, in order to please her. He’d kiss the dust off her feet.”
“Thanks,” she said spitefully. “Rub it in.”
The cab swayed along in the gay weather.