“Oh, you wouldn’t get onto it now,” she replied, But later, in the hansom, the desire to unburden her mind achieved the mastery.
“Are you awake?” she demanded, and went on: “He’s not a bad sort, that boy, you know.”
“Damn him!” said Edward, breathing heavily.
“I rather like him myself,” she continued. “He’s a bit slow to talk to, and he’s fresher than Devonshire cream, but there isn’t a drop of the Johnnie in him. He’s as clean as my little girl.”
“Damn him,” repeated her husband, but in a milder and even argumentative tone.
“He’s a proper bundle of nerves, that youngster,” she mused, as if talking to herself. “And whatever those nerves of his tell him to do, he’ll do it. And I’d lay odds he’s goin’ to surprise us all. He’s got something boilin’ in his mind—something that’s just struck him to-night—I could see that. Oh, if I was a man!—I’d get out of this hansom now, and I’d follow that lad, and I’d get hold of him somehow, and I’d bend him any way I chose—that would be something like!—but then again, you take him some other way, and he’s as stubborn as a moke. But I like him, all the same.” She turned toward her husband, and lifted her voice a little. “I like him so much, I’m thinkin’ of havin’ him for a brother-in-law.”
“Strornary thing,” commented Edward, earnestly, “no man’er where I start from, whenever I get t’ the Circus, I get the hiccups.”
Cora put her head back against the cushions, and closed her eyes.