Lydia passed over her denial with the dignified virtue of one who disdained casuistry. "You spoke up to him sharp, but he never laid it up against you," she said. "He has a disposition for which he had ought to be thankful to heaven, and I make no doubt he is. And he never practises any of those small vices which people allow themselves, and which pave the way to entire destruction—I allude to cigar smoking and the like."
Rob remembered the ashes in a certain jar in the sitting-room, left there by Basil and Bruce's cigars and Bartlemy's artist pipe, and was silent, examining her cake in the oven to hide her quivering lips.
"I am glad that he is a good man, Lydia, for I'm sure I don't see what you would do with an imperfect one," she said, and Lydia was gratified to hear the quaver in Rob's voice which she attributed to emotion. "And so you are going to be married, and want to live with Cousin Peace? Can your Demetrius do gardening?"
"He thoroughly understands all kinds of gardening," returned Lydia. "There are few auctions in Fayre, so between times he would be gardening, and I should do the housework. It would be a lucky arrangement for your cousin and—and us." And immovable Lydia faltered over the latter touching pronoun.
"And what would become of us without you, Lydia?" asked Rob. "Have you thought of us?"
"My mother would come to do for you," said Lydia, "and she knows how to do everything better than I do."
"Is she—younger than you, Lyddie?" asked Rob.
Lydia gave Rob one of the glances by which she frequently reproved frivolity. "A mother is never younger than her child," she said sternly. "But my mother is livelier than I am, and she is only middle-aged—forty-three."
"How can your mother be only forty-three?" cried Rob involuntarily.
"I am twenty-four, and she was nineteen years old when I was born," said Lydia. "It seems to me I smell that cake."