“I like men who have been about the world a little,” said Arabella reflectively. “They are more exciting, if you know what I mean, Max.”
Mr Ravenscar thought gloomily that he knew very well what she meant. “True, but such men do not make good husbands for very young women,” he said.
Arabella turned her innocent eyes upon him. “Why don’t they, Max?”
“Well, they grow old too fast,” he explained. “Think! Before you well knew where you were you would find your husband a martyr to gout, no longer ready to go out to parties, but wanting always to sit at home over the fire.”
Miss Ravenscar looked much struck by this view of the matter. “All of them?” she asked anxiously.
“All of them,” said her brother, with great firmness.
“Oh!” Miss Ravenscar drove on in silence, evidently digesting this dictum. A barouche ahead of her, drawn by two sluggish brown horses, attracted her attention. She said, pouting a little: “Aunt Selina! Shall I go past, and pretend we did not see her?”
“Better not,” he said. “Go past, and draw up by the trees.”
She looped a rein, as he had taught her, and shot past the barouche in a very dashing style, to the evident admiration of a gentleman driving a phaeton towards them.
“I did that well, did I not?” she asked, with naive pleasure in her own skill.