‘Delaying, as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself when all the woods are green,
somewhere in the “Idylls.”’
‘I don’t remember; so I won’t pretend to—though I should do so as a rule.’
She looked at him oddly, and seemed about to laugh, yet did not.
‘You have had little experience of the country?’ Jasper continued.
‘Very little. You, I think, have known it from childhood?’
‘In a sort of way. I was born in Wattleborough, and my people have always lived here. But I am not very rural in temperament. I have really no friends here; either they have lost interest in me, or I in them. What do you think of the girls, my sisters?’
The question, though put with perfect simplicity, was embarrassing.
‘They are tolerably intellectual,’ Jasper went on, when he saw that it would be difficult for her to answer. ‘I want to persuade them to try their hands at literary work of some kind or other. They give lessons, and both hate it.’
‘Would literary work be less—burdensome?’ said Marian, without looking at him.