“Grapes are sour, my lass. The man you did care for might not be able to give you them,” Trixy says spitefully.
“I would accept them fast enough if I had the chance,” Baby confesses ruefully, climbing on to the table as well, and enviously examining the brilliants and rubies. “Just fancy, that old Hamilton has never offered a thing but that!” and she sticks out her third finger, on which reposes an old-fashioned ring, with a bit of Archibald Hamilton’s sandy hair shining through the crystal. “Scotch are such screws, I hate them. Do you know, girls, that I have nearly made up my mind to give the old gentleman the slip, and to elope with Gladstone Beaconsfield Hargreaves.”
“Heavens! what a name for a common village Veterinary,” Gabrielle says, with a curl of her scarlet lip. “And to think of his awful people having the audacity to mention Beaconsfield in the same breath with Gladstone!”
“Rather mentioning Gladstone in the same breath as Beaconsfield!” cries Zai, horror-struck. She is a thorough little Conservative to the back-bone, and even goes to sleep in her dainty white-curtained bed with a badge of the Primrose League upon her bosom.
“A very good name it is!” flashes Baby, taking up the cudgels in defence of her rustic admirer. “I think his godfather and godmother were sensible people, and had no narrow-minded party-feeling and that sort of rubbish in their heads. Real Liberal-Conservatives they were, of course. I can’t stand politics, Trixy, can you?”
“Can’t abide them,” Trixy murmurs lazily. “I hate everything it gives one trouble to understand.”
“Politics make me quite ill,” Baby goes on, as she jumps off the table and flings herself full-length on the hearth-rug. “When the governor and Lord Delaval begin at them, I always feel inclined to roar. The governor shuts up one eye, and tries to look so awfully clever, you know.
“ ‘Dolly Churchill, my dear fellow, is the man—the man! Our only hope in these days of misguided, dangerous democrats. Our only stay! The Liberal Government have been the very devil—they have played ducks and drakes with everybody and everything, and if they had lasted one day longer—one day longer! mark my words!—we should have been at—at—well, not where we are now!’
“And Delaval, who is a red-hot Republican at heart, just smiles that beautiful cynical smile of his, and thinks the governor a regular jackass, and so do I.”
“You shouldn’t speak so of Papa, you irreverent monkey,” Zai says gravely.