"I never said anything of the kind."
"Well, you didn't seem to smile upon the notion."
"The notion, as you call it, appears to me in itself quite admirable, if not exactly novel; but you would need to make sure, wouldn't you? that the husband--I think a husband is included in your scheme of felicity--is in keeping--in the picture as it were."
Tony's voice was dry as that in which he instilled the rules of prosody into his form. In fact it was less impassioned, for on occasion he waxed eloquent though vituperative when dealing with that form's Latin prose.
Again Lallie turned half round and leant her elbow on his knee. Again her grey eyes searched his face, apparently in vain, for some clue to the tone in which he spoke.
"I wish I was a rich widow," she said vindictively, "with a nice little place of my own, then there'd be no bother at all, and you could come and stay with me and arrange cricket matches all the summer holidays. I'd put up that eleven you always go off with, and we'd have a cricket week and lovely times."
"The prospect is certainly pleasing," Tony remarked, without enthusiasm; "but it seems to me a little callous on your part to be so anxious to kill off your husband before ever you've tried one."
"Do you think Mr. Johns would make a nice husband?" Lallie asked in a detached, impersonal sort of way.
"Good heavens! How should I know? I hope he won't think of being any one's husband for years to come. He couldn't keep a wife; for one thing, he's too poor."
"Oh, but he is sure to get on; he'll be a headmaster some day. You'll see. I never met a young man who was more wrapped up in his profession. He's influencing boys all day long."