At her further exclamations of doubt and amazement, Mahony's patience slipped its leash. "Surely to goodness my health comes first ... before any confounded practice?"
"Ssh! Baby's asleep.—And don't get cross, Richard. You can hardly expect me not to be surprised when you spring a thing of this sort on me. You've never even dropped a hint of it before."
"Because I knew very well what it would be. You dead against it, of course!"
"Now I call that unjust. You've barely let me get a word in edgeways."
"Oh, I know by heart everything you're going to say. It's nonsense ... folly ... madness ... and so on: all the phrases you women fish up from your vocabulary when you want to stave off a change—hinder any alteration of the STATUS QUO. But I'll tell you this, wife. You'll bury me here, if I don't get away soon. I'm not much more than skin and bone as it is. And I confess, if I've got to be buried I'd rather lie elsewhere—have good English earth atop of me."
Had Mary been a man, she might have retorted that this was a very woman's way of shifting ground. She bit her lip and did not answer immediately. Then: "You know I can't bear to hear you talk like that, even in fun. Besides, you always say much more than you mean, dear."
"Very well then, if you prefer it, wait and see! You'll be sorry some day."
"Do you mean to tell me, Richard, you're in earnest, when you talk of selling off your practice and going to England?"
"I can buy another there, can't I?"
With these words he leapt to his feet, afire with animation. And while Mary, now thoroughly uneasy, was folding up her work, he dilated upon the benefits that would accrue to them from the change. Good-bye to dust, and sun, and drought, to blistering hot winds and PAPIER MACHE walls! They would make their new home in some substantial old stone house that had weathered half a century or more, tangled over with creepers, folded away in its own privacy as only an English house could be. In the flower-garden roses would trail over arch and pergola; there would be a lawn with shaped yews on it; while in the orchard old apple-trees would flaunt their red abundance above grey, lichened walls.