"Egad, let's be decent!" Harry cried.
"Decent! For shame, sir! What's more decent than man and wife?"
"Man and wife!" Harry echoed it with a sour laugh. "Do you feel a wife? I never felt less of a man."
"You shall be satisfied," she said, and looked at him gravely. "And I—I am not afraid, Harry."
CHAPTER XIII
DISTRESS OF A MOTHER
Mr. Hadley and Sir John Burford in the hall at Tetherdown looked at each other across the fire. "Would you call for a pipe now, Charles?" says Sir John, fidgeting.
"There'll be none in the house, sir. Geoffrey has no stomach for tobacco."
"Damme, if I know what he hath a stomach for," Sir John grumbled, and kicked at the burning logs. "He don't eat no more than an old woman, nor drink so much as a young miss. Ain't the half-hour gone, Charles?"
"That's a poetic phrase, sir. It means a year or so—while she's tiring her hair."