I often used to see her there, and when
a chance occurred she would talk to me. It seemed to be a relief to her to use her own tongue, but it made me nervous at times for fear someone would hear her.
Then one day I got a letter from “Kipper” to say he was over for a holiday and was stopping at Morley’s, and asking me to look him up.
He had not changed much except to get a bit fatter and more prosperous-looking. Of course, we talked about her ladyship, and I told him what she said.
“Rum things, women,” he says; “never know their own minds.”
“Oh, they know them all right when they get there,” I says. “How could she tell what being a Marchioness was like till she’d tried it?”
“Pity,” he says, musing like. “I reckoned it the very thing she’d tumble
to. I only come over to get a sight of ’er, and to satisfy myself as she was getting along all right. Seems I’d better a’ stopped away.”
“You ain’t ever thought of marrying yourself?” I asks.
“Yes, I have,” he says. “It’s slow for a man over thirty with no wife and kids to bustle him, you take it from me, and I ain’t the talent for the Don Juan fake.”