‘Ay! There’s a heap of things to see after. I shall have to be back and forward from there till it’s time to take Crackpot down to Epsom.... Did you ever see a Derby, Eleanor?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Not when a horse of yours is running.’
‘Little starched out puritan! You might write a tract, or get Michael Langstroth to do it, and have it printed, and salve your conscience over, by distributing it over the grand stand.’
‘I have something to say to you, Otho. I do not like living alone in this great house when you are so much away; and I have been thinking whether to go to the Dower House, and take up my abode there.’
‘Hoh!’ Otho paused. ‘While you are about it, why not cut the whole concern, and go to the Websters?’ he said. ‘They would be overjoyed to have you. It doesn’t suit you? I knew it wouldn’t; but you would come. You see, my dear, when a little earthenware pipkin of a woman jumps into the water, and is for sailing along with the brass pots, she generally comes to grief. My life suits me; but it is so unlike all you have been accustomed to, that you can’t fit into it—can’t even settle down to look on at it. You look downright ill now, and——’
‘Otho! that shows how little you understand,’ said she, a convulsive laugh struggling with her inner bitterness of heart. The whole thing came before her as so tragi-comic; so horrible, yet so laughable. So Otho thought that playing fast and loose with his life, drinking and dicing, brawling and betting, and generally conducting himself like a blackguard, was a fine, heroic thing—a proof that he was a brass pot amongst men, and able to sail unharmed down that stream. Ludicrous, pitiable, agonisingly laughable theory!
‘It remains to be proved which of us two is the brass pot, and which the pipkin,’ she went on, unable to help smiling. ‘For my part, I fancy we are both made of very common clay. But, to leave parables, I would rather not go to the Websters. My ideas about life and other[other] things have changed very much lately. I would rather not return to my old one at present. I should prefer to go to the Dower House, if it will be all the same to you.’
‘Oh, quite. Since you prefer to stay here. It is an odd taste, I think, for a girl brought up as you have been. But you are better away from here. There’s no doubt of that.’