“Of course it would go,” Carlotta said.
“How could it go?” Rosa asked. “It could no more go than if you were to stand in the boat and pull the boat-rope.”
“You’ve not even got enough mechanical sense, Rosa,” Hi said, “to make you keep quiet when mechanics are being talked. If I’d had an old boat or punt to experiment on, instead of a clothes-basket covered with rick-cloth, I’d have proved that my thing would go.”
“If it would go, why hasn’t it been done? All the English are always messing about in boats.”
“My engine is not for ordinary rivers, but for the brooks at home, or even the canals, where you cannot always row, nor even paddle in comfort.”
“There wasn’t much comfort in your clothes-basket, if I remember rightly,” Rosa said.
“There isn’t much comfort in any good thing.”
“I should have thought religion,” Rosa said.
“You try it and see.”
“Manuel is very late,” Donna Emilia said. “We’re almost at an end here. Do you think that he will come, ’Lotta?”