“Yes, I do; don’t I?” said Jack quietly, “But do you know, Lady Martlett, I often think that I could turn out a better description of a country estate than some of those fellows do?”
“Indeed?” said her Ladyship. “Yes, indeed,” said Jack, who eagerly assumed his bantering tones as soon as he was alone with Lady Martlett, telling himself it was a rest, and that it was a necessity to bring down her Ladyship’s haughtiness.
“Dang her! I’ll make her thoroughly disgusted with me,” he said to himself. “I hate the handsome Semiramis!—She’d like to drag me at her chariot-wheels, and she shall not.”
“I believe,” he continued, “that I could do something far better than the well-known specimen about the litter of rose-leaves and the noise of the nightingales.”
“Indeed, doctor,” said her Ladyship, with a curl of her lip.
“O yes,” cried Scales. “Now, for instance, suppose that Leigh Court were to be let.”
“Leigh Court is not likely to be let,” said her Ladyship haughtily.
“No?” said the doctor, raising his eyebrows slightly. “Well, perhaps not, though one never knows. Your Ladyship might take a dislike to it, say; and if it were to go into the estate-agent’s list—”
“It never will, Doctor Scales! I should consider it a profanation,” said her Ladyship haughtily. “Pray, change the subject.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Scales politely.—“Been up to the Academy, of course?”