“Monstrous! But you think——”
“I think that she is the only girl who could carry off such a thing without self-consciousness. She is a girl of the greatest taste.”
He shook his head.
“That’s bad news,” he said.
“Bad news?”
“Bad. If she has any taste what chance should I have?” His mother smiled. She knew girls a good deal better than did her son. She had come to think of her son as the one who chooses and the girl as the one who is chosen. She never thought of the girl as having any choice in the matter. It was her metier to be chosen, and all the others stood by envying her.
It was no wonder that she smiled at his suggestion.
“I only wish—but it is too late now. After all, it is only people who have not seen her—who do not know her—that will sneer at her being only a farmer’s daughter,” she said.
“Only fools,” he cried. “Only—such fools—Framsby fools! Gloriana! What better can any one be than a farmer? I’m a farmer. Not that that settles the question once and for all,” he added, with a laugh. “Lord, how rotten is all this rot that one hears about family and trade and that! It’s a dreadful thing for a chap to have a shop, and, of course, society, as it’s called, shuns him; but if he multiplies his offence by a hundred he’s all right, and no matter what a bounder he may be, society opens its arms to him, and the bounder becomes a baronet. If a chap like me sets up a dairy and sells the milk, people say that it’s sporting; but if a real farmer—the right sort of man—runs a dairy of the highest order, he is called a dairyman, and is put on a level with gardeners and grooms. So far as family is concerned, the Wadhursts are as far above us and any of the rotters that control society at Framsby as our family is above the Gibman lot who are hand in glove with Royalty. The Wadhursts were in this neighbourhood at the time of the Heptarchy.”
“I think she is the nicest girl I ever met,” said his mother, when the smoke had time to clear away. “Poor girl! How could she have made such a fool of herself?”