Not very hard.
Jacóbus sat up and adjusted his nightcap. “Ah, you see, she ran away,” he said. “A year ago she’d have braved it out. I shall still make something of Harriet.”
She came back presently with a bundle of papers. It was part of her daily task to read aloud all the official documents connected with the government of Drum, which were sent to the caged Town Councillor. Jacóbus fretted incessantly at the thought how everything was going wrong.
“The people in the streets look just as usual,” said Harriet; but that consideration afforded her husband no comfort. She yawned patiently over endless statistics regarding gas and drains. It was her ignorance which caused her to wonder whether the town would not have been governed far better without a council, and especially without an official printing-press.
“It is time for my medicine,” said Mopius, who, by saying this five minutes too early, constantly succeeded in suggesting an omission on Harriet’s part. “Well, what says the Burgomaster concerning the market dues? He is a fool, that Burgomaster. And so are the aldermen. Heigho! I wonder what will become of this poor town when I am gone! It is strange how greatly I have attached myself to it. Almost as much as if it had been my birthplace. But I had always ‘une nature attachante.’ It is a great mistake.”
“Not necessarily,” said Harriet.
“Yes, yes. Life is too short: here to-day, gone to-morrow. Ah, well! Is that idiot going to lower the rent for market stands?”
“I don’t know,” said Harriet, wearily, turning over her pile of documents; “I’ll read you the whole lot; you can see for yourself.” And she did read, monotonously, for an hour and a half, Mopius following everything with eager interest, interrupting, gesticulating, nodding approval or, more frequently, dissent.
“Right, right,” said Jacóbus, in high good-humor over somebody’s opposition to the powers that be in Drum. “Give it them well. I never approved of knuckling under to grandees. You gain nothing but kicks by bowing to ‘My Lord.’ Ah, they’ll miss me when I’m dead, Harriet, and so will you.”