And Mildred Claridge said, "I know that, quite as I observed, man proposes—when he has been sufficiently prodded by some one who, because she is an idiot—And that is why I am not blushing—very much——"
"Your coloring is not—repellent." His high-pitched pleasant voice, in spite of him, shook now with more than its habitual suggestion of a stutter. "What have you done to me, my dear?" he said. "Why can't I jest at this… as I have always done at everything——?"
"Boy, boy!" she said; "laughter is excellent. And wisdom too is excellent. Only I think that you have laughed too much, and I have been too shrewd—But now I know that it is better to be a princess in Grub Street than to figure at Ranelagh as a good-hearted fool's latest purchase. For Lord Brudenel is really very good-natured," she argued, "and I did like him, and mother was so set upon it—and he was rich—and I honestly thought——"
"And now?" he said.
"And now I know," she answered happily.
They looked at each other for a little while. Then he took her hand, prepared in turn for self-denial.
"The Household Review wants me to 'do' a series on famous English bishops," he reported, humbly. "I had meant to refuse, because it would all have to be dull High-Church twaddle. And the English Gentleman wants some rather outrageous lying done in defense of the Corn Laws. You would not despise me too much—would you, Mildred?—if I undertook it now. I really have no choice. And there is plenty of hackwork of that sort available to keep us going until more solvent days, when I shall have opportunity to write something quite worthy of you."
"For the present, dear, it would be much more sensible, I think, to 'do' the bishops and the Corn Laws. You see, that kind of thing pays very well, and is read by the best people; whereas poetry, of course— But you can always come back to the verse-making, you know——"
"If you ever let me," he said, with a flash of prescience. "And I don't believe you mean to let me. You are your mother's daughter, after all! Nefarious woman, you are planning, already, to make a responsible member of society out of me! and you will do it, ruthlessly! Such is to be Prince Fribble's actual burial—in his own private carriage, with a receipted tax-bill in his pocket!"
"What nonsense you poets talk!" the girl observed. But to him, forebodingly, that familiar statement seemed to lack present application.