“I haven’t the least idea. I’ll see if you like.”
“No—in that case I should have to give him an order, and I don’t know what in the world to ask him to do. He sits there for hours; with my simple habits I afford him no employment. I’m afraid I’ve no grand imagination.”
“The burden of grandeur!” said Littlemore.
“Oh yes, I’m very grand for clothes and things. But on the whole I like it. I’m only afraid he’ll hear. I talk so very loud. That’s another thing I’m trying to get over.”
“Why do you want to be different?”
“Well, because everything else is so,” Mrs. Headway bravely pleaded. “Did you hear that I had lost my husband?” she went on abruptly.
“Do you mean—a—Mr.—?” and Littlemore paused with an effect that didn’t seem to come home to her.
“I mean Mr. Headway,” she said with dignity. “I’ve been through a good deal since you saw me last: marriage and death and trouble and all sorts of things.”
“You had been through a good deal of marriage before that,” her old friend ventured to observe.
She rested her eyes on him with extravagant intensity and without a change of colour. “Not so much, not so much!—”