“But that you could live all the while and save that—!” Yes, he was at liberty, as he hadn’t been, quite pleasantly to marvel. All his wonderments in life had been hitherto unanswered—and didn’t the change mean that here again was the social relation?
“Ah, I didn’t live as you saw me the other day.”
“Yes,” he answered—and didn’t he the next instant feel he must fairly have smiled with it?—“the other day you were going it!”
“For once in my life,” said Kate Cookham. “I’ve left the hotel,” she after a moment added.
“Ah, you’re in—a—lodgings?” he found himself inquiring as for positive sociability.
She had apparently a slight shade of hesitation, but in an instant it was all right; as what he showed he wanted to know she seemed mostly to give him. “Yes—but far of course from here. Up on the hill.” To which, after another instant, “At The Mount, Castle Terrace,” she subjoined.
“Oh, I know The Mount. And Castle Terrace is awfully sunny and nice.”
“Awfully sunny and nice,” Kate Cookham took from him.
“So that if it isn’t,” he pursued, “like the Royal, why you’re at least comfortable.”
“I shall be comfortable anywhere now,” she replied with a certain dryness.