‘I look all right too, don’t I?’ he said, laughing. ‘I agree with you that it’s good for one, though. I’ve thought since I came back that—— ’ He paused and did not finish the sentence.
‘That it would do a lot of people whom you’ve met a lot of good if they had a little hardship and privation to go through,’ she said, finishing it for him. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t let them off with a little,’ he said. ‘I’d give them—some of them, at any rate—a good deal. Perhaps I’m not quite used to it, but I can’t stand this sort of life—I should go all soft and queer under it.’
‘Well, you’re not obliged to endure it at all,’ said Sprats. ‘You can clear out of town whenever you please and go to Saxonstowe—it is lovely in summer.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I’m going there soon. I—I don’t think town life quite appeals to me.’
‘I suppose that you will go off to some waste place of the earth again, sooner or later, won’t you?’ she said. ‘I should think that if one once tastes that sort of thing one can’t very well resist the temptation. What made you wish to explore?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I always wanted to travel when I was a boy, but I never got any chance. Then the title came to me rather unexpectedly, you know, and when I found that I could indulge my tastes—well, I indulged them.’
‘And you prefer the desert to the drawing-room?’ she said, watching him.
‘Lots!’ he said fervently. ‘Lots!’
Sprats smiled.