"I'm sure I can't," Wentworth replied. "The other day I thought we had been three-quarters of an hour in a tunnel and we had only been two minutes and a half."
"Now then," Pateley said with a satisfied air, turning to Sir William, "I have cheered Miss Tarlton on to a piece of extravagance." Sir William felt a distinct sense of pleasure. "I have persuaded her to buy a new machine."
"The thing that amuses me," said Sir William with some scorn, having apparently forgotten which of his pet aversions had been the subject of the conversation, "is people's theory that when once you have bought a bicycle it costs you nothing afterwards."
"It is not a bicycle, Sir William, it is a camera," said Miss Tarlton, with some asperity.
"Oh, well, it is the same thing," Sir William said.
"The same thing?" Miss Tarlton repeated, with the accent of one who feels an immeasurable mental gulf between herself and her interlocutor.
"As to results, I mean," he said. Arrived at this point Miss Tarlton felt she need no longer listen, she simply noted with pitying tolerance the random utterance. "A camera costs very nearly as much to keep as a horse, what with films and bottles of stuff, and all the other accessories. And as for a bicycle, I am quite sure that you have to count as much for mending it as you do for a horse's keep."
"The really expensive thing, though, is a motor," said Wentworth. "Lots of men nowadays don't marry because they can't afford to keep a wife as well as a motor."
Rendel, who was standing by Rachel's side at the tea-table, caught this sentence. He looked up at her with a smile. She blushed.