The General caressed a whisker with his white hand.
“Ah yes,” he said—“young Tharp! Let's see, he's not the eldest. His brother's in my old corps. What does this young fellow do with himself?”
Mrs. Pendyce answered:
“He's only farming. I'm afraid he'll have nothing to speak of, but he's a dear good boy. It'll be a long engagement. Of course, there's nothing in farming, and Horace insists on their having a thousand a year. It depends so much on Mr. Tharp. I think they could do perfectly well on seven hundred to start with, don't you, Charles?”
General Pendyce's answer was not more conspicuously to the point than usual, for he was a man who loved to pursue his own trains of thought.
“What about George?”, he said. “I met him in the hall as I was coming in, but he ran off in the very deuce of a hurry. They told me at Epsom that he was hard hit.”
His eyes, distracted by a fly for which he had taken a dislike, failed to observe his sister-in-law's face.
“Hard hit?” she repeated.
“Lost a lot of money. That won't do, you know, Margery—that won't do. A little mild gambling's one thing.”
Mrs. Pendyce said nothing; her face was rigid: It was the face of a woman on the point of saying: “Do not compel me to hint that you are boring me!”