“I would!” Mrs. Hurst smiled, frankly.
“But when it is just we three? At home I have lunch alone every day—it suits Edward better to lunch at his club, and Barry is at school. I hate the sight of the lonely table.”
“We should like to have you very much, if you can bear lunching with people in working clothes. No human power can get Robin out of breeches until the evening, and not always then!”
“I should think not,” said Robin, warmly. “Fancy getting into a frock when one has to feed pigs!”
Mrs. Lane shuddered delicately.
“I don’t know how you do it—and manage to remain so nice!” she said.
“Oh, it’s all fun,” Robin answered. “I haven’t yet managed to see the fun of skinning rabbits, but it has to be done: no doubt the humour of it will strike me in time. Mrs. Lane, when you are better, aren’t you going out with your menfolk? You’d have an awfully good time!”
Again the guest shuddered.
“My dear,” she said, confidentially, “I was never made for the country. I can be quite happy while my men-folk are enjoying themselves, so long as they don’t ask me to join them: I simply loathe a gun, and as for dangling a worm on a fishing-rod, nothing bores me more, unless it is casting a fly, which I find actively irritating—cast as I will, the abominable insect never goes in the right place! I think your veranda is delightful, as long as no one asks me to look at the scenery or to gaze at live cows or chickens—or pigs! All, to my mind, are better in their inanimate forms. You won’t ask me to admire ducklings, will you, Robin, dear?”
“Never—unless cooked!” said Robin, laughing.