"You may say 'Hang Mr. Pixley!' though it is not an expression I am in the habit of using myself. But please don't begin it with a D."
"Hang Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley's son, and all his intentions!" he said fervently and with visible relish.
"Yes," she nodded slowly, as though savouring it; and then added, with a delicious twinkle of the soft brown eyes, "There is something in that that appeals to me. Jeremiah Pixley is almost too good for this world. At least—"
"He is absolutely unwholesomely good. My own private opinion is that he's a disreputable old blackg—I mean whited sepulchre."
"Unwholesomely good!" She nodded again. "Yes,—that, I think, very fairly expresses him. 'Unco' guid,' we would say up north. But, all the same, he is Margaret's uncle and guardian and trustee. He is also the kind of man whom nothing can turn from a line he has once adopted."
"I know. Pigheaded as a War-Office-mule," he side-tracked hastily.
For she had looked at him with a momentary bristle of enquiry in the gentle brown eyes, and he remembered, just in time, that her husband had once held the reins in Pall Mall for half a year, when, feeling atrophy creeping on, he resigned office and died three months later.
He hastened to add,—"The ordinary Army-mule, you know, is specially constructed with a cast-iron mouth, and a neck of granite, and a disposition like—like Mr. Pixley's. I imagine Mr. Pixley can be excessively unpleasant when he tries. To me he is excessively unpleasant even to think of, and without any exertion whatever on his part."
"Yes. Mrs. Pixley would rather convey that impression. She is always depressed and apprehensive-looking. But she is very fond of Margaret, and that no doubt is why—But I suppose she really has no choice in the matter, until she comes of age—"
"Mrs. Pixley?"