“You chose it, me darlin’. I’d say ’twas in your blood.”
“Well, and so I thought, but it’s tedious beyond anything I ever dreamed of! I think I will have a cottage in the country one day, and keep hens.”
He burst out laughing. “God save the hens! And you supping off lobsters every night, and wearing silks, and fallals, and letting the guineas drip through the pretty fingers of you!”
Her eyes twinkled; the corners of her humorous mouth quivered responsively. “That’s the devil of it,” she confessed. “What’s to be done?”
“There’s the suckling,” he drawled. “I doubt he’d be glad to give you your cottage, if it’s that you want, so you might play at keeping farm, like the sainted French Queen, God rest he soul!”
“You know me better!” she said, with a flash. “Do you think I would serve a romantic boy such a turn as that? A rare thing for him to find himself tied to a gamester five years the elder!”
“You know, Deb,” he said, watching the rise and fall of hi dice through half-shut eyes, “there are times I’ve a mind to run off with you meself.”
She smiled, but shook her head. “When you’re foxed, may be.”
His hand shut on the dice; he turned his head to look at her. “Be easy; I’m sober enough. What do you say, me darlin’? Will you throw in your lot with a worthless fellow that will never come to any good in this world, let alone the next?
“Are you offering for me, Lucius?” she demanded, blinking at him.