"Soft as a turnip," contemptuously interposed Ernest; "eats too much. It would take twelve months hard training to make any sort of a man of him."
"It would be a pity to see Dawn just settling down into the dull, drudging life of a farmer's wife, going to an occasional show or tea-meeting in a home-made dress, with two or three children dragging at her skirts and looking a perfect wreck, as most of the mothers do."
"By Jove, yes!"
"She has a right to be on the lawn on Cup Day or in the front circle on first nights. She'd surprise some of the grandees, and with her vivacity and courage she'd make a furore for a time."
"She'd make a good sport if she were a man," assented Ernest. "No running stiff or jamming a jock on the post or anything like that from her—she'd always hit straight out from the shoulder and above the belt."
"Yes; she has particularly infatuated me, and I'd like to save her from Eweword."
"Marry him to the girl Grosvenor while you're about it and that will dispose of him and suit her, for she strikes me as anxious for matrimony."
"Oh, no, I think she's a splendid woman in every way, but—"
"But, even the finest and most chivalrous man, while he thinks the only sphere for women is matrimony, yet is shocked if a woman betrays in the least way that her ambitions lie in the domestic line—strange inconsistency. However, you will not let Dawn know my ideas of disposing of her;" and with the want of perspicacity of his sex, or else with a wonderful power of covering his thoughts excelling that of women, and of which women never suspect men, Ernest promised without sensing what I had in view.