“You ought to know my Aunt Pinnie—she’s just such another benighted idolater!” Hyacinth returned.
“Oh, you’re making me like you very fast! And pray who’s your Aunt Pinnie?”
“She’s a dressmaker and a charming little woman. I should like her to come and see you.”
“I’m afraid I’m not in her line—I never had on a dress in my life. But, as a charming woman, I should be delighted to see her,” Miss Muniment hastened to add.
“I’ll bring her some day,” he said; and then he went on rather incongruously, for he was irritated by the girl’s optimism, thinking it a shame her sharpness should be enlisted on the wrong side. “Don’t you want, for yourself, a better place to live in?”
She jerked herself up and for a moment he thought she would jump out of her bed at him. “A better place than this? Pray how could there be a better place? Every one thinks it’s lovely; you should see our view by daylight—you should see everything I’ve got. Perhaps you’re used to something very fine, but Lady Aurora says that in all Belgrave Square there isn’t such a cosy little room. If you think I’m not perfectly content you’re very much mistaken!”
Such an attitude could only exasperate him, and his exasperation made him indifferent to the mistake of his having appeared to sniff at Miss Muniment’s quarters. Pinnie herself, submissive as she was, had spared him that sort of displeasure; she groaned over the dinginess of Lomax Place sufficiently to remind him that she had not been absolutely stultified by misery. “Don’t you sometimes make your brother very cross?” he asked, smiling, of his present entertainer.
“Cross? I don’t know what you take us for! I never saw him lose his temper in his life.”
“He must be a rum customer! Doesn’t he really care for—for what we were talking about?”
For a space Rosy was silent; then she replied: “What my brother really cares for—well, one of these days, when you know, you’ll tell me.”