“Why not?”
“Well—why not?” She still smiled. “First, because he’s old. Yes—quite old, really. I dare say he’ll never see fifty again—”
“Too old to make love to you,” said Jack, loftily. “That’s certain!”
“He doesn’t make love to me,” she replied. “Oh, dear!—you won’t understand! He doesn’t make love at all!”
“Then what does he do?” demanded Jack. “I should jolly well like to know!”
“What does he do?” she repeated, musingly. Then she suddenly laughed joyously: “Oh, Jack!—I don’t believe I know! He reads the papers and smokes—and writes a little—then he wants to go for a walk and asks me to go with him—and we talk-and—and that’s all!”
“That’s all!” and Jack looked whole volumes of incredulity. “And just to read the papers and smoke and take walks with you he comes down here miles away from London to stay with you and your father whole weeks together! A regular sponge I call him! Yes!—a sponge!”
“Dad likes him,” she said, briefly.
“I daresay! Your Dad likes any one who’ll talk history and politics to him by the hour. But you!—you don’t want history and politics!”
“Don’t I?”—and her eyes sparkled prettily. Then I’m like the poet Keats—