"I suppose you mean for anything she may take it into her head to do?"
I put it to him that Viola's movements were not always exactly calculable. She might take it into her head to do anything. I really couldn't answer for her.
"You can't," he said. "But I can. She may go off and look at a belfry or two." (I should have said that "looking at the belfry" was a phrase the family had adopted for any queer thing that any of us might do.) "If there's a belfry anywhere to be seen you may depend upon it she'd want to look at it."
"Whether," I said, "it's in a dangerous place or not?"
"Whether it's in a dangerous place or not. But I'll trust you to keep her out of dangerous places. That's rather what I wanted to talk to you about."
I protested. "There's no good talking about it. I've told you that's just precisely the responsibility I won't take. And I won't let Norah take it. If you think there's going to be any danger you must look after your own wife yourself."
"My dear fellow, how can I look after her if I'm not here?"
"You're as much here as I am," I said. "More so. And she's your wife, not mine."
I can say now—there's no reason why I shouldn't; it would only amuse Jimmy if he were to see it written—I can say now that for one awful moment I suspected Jimmy of meditating an infidelity. Perhaps he was; but not as we count infidelity.
He ignored what I took to be the essence of the thing.