“That was partly it,” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
“How you misunderstood me!” she said.
“You don’t mind?”
“It was noble of you. But I am sorry,” she said, “you should think me likely to be ashamed of you because you follow a decent trade.”
“I didn’t know at first, you see,” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
And he submitted meekly to a restoration of his self-respect. He was as useful a citizen as could be,—it was proposed and carried,—and his lying was of the noblest. And so the breakfast concluded much more happily than his brightest expectation, and they rode out of ruddy little Blandford as though no shadow of any sort had come between them.
XXXVI.
As they were sitting by the roadside among the pine trees half-way up a stretch of hill between Wimborne and Ringwood, however, Mr. Hoopdriver reopened the question of his worldly position.
“Ju think,” he began abruptly, removing a meditative cigarette from his mouth, “that a draper’s shopman is a decent citizen?”
“Why not?”