“It may mean something to her partner, too, if you come to that,” returned Cyril. “It will to Evangeline’s, I should think. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for something. She’s like you, Sue, in some ways; with all the naughty little point of the story left out. I never knew such a rough rider in the field of conversation. She’d never have been able to stuff me with the stories you did about the injury to your pure young mind when I kissed you. Lord! think of it!”
Mrs. Fulton kept a dignified silence for a minute or two, and then sighed again, as if to waft away the possibility of looking at Nature’s beauties with a man who had been blind from birth. “How did you like the people you met to-day?” she asked.
“Oh, some of them weren’t bad. Hatton will be here to breakfast. He’ll always be about the place, so I hope you’ll like him; he’s my A.D.C. And all their wives will be round soon, I suppose, to pay their respects. Hatton hasn’t got one I’m glad to say; though I daresay he’ll be as preoccupied with the subject as if he had. I wish I had gone into the Navy instead of the Army.”
“Why?” she asked, though she knew that the drift of what he was going to say would be somehow unflattering to herself.
“Because one’s subordinates have always got a neat woman in lodgings somewhere, and they just clear off in their spare time and keep themselves employed until one meets them again. Their wives don’t litter about the place and fight with each other.”
“I don’t know how any woman can care to be a mere tool like that,” she replied. “It must make them so one-sided.”
“Yes,” he said, “but think of the feelings of the happy man who can say, ‘This little side is all for me,’ and knows that she has no other to give to one who might like to have it. Why, it would make life a different thing. Where are the girls, by the way?”
“I think they are arranging their rooms and showing the servants where to put things. They seem to be the most curious creatures that we have got; but it was so difficult to find well trained ones. They call me ‘Mrs. Fulton,’ and tell me what they have been accustomed to. I think I shall engage a housekeeper, Cyril. I do hate explaining, and these creatures want to argue about everything.”
“Can’t the girls do it?” he asked.
“Oh no; they have other things to do. Besides, Evangeline turns everything upside down. I had the greatest difficulty in getting the dining-room table put where I wanted it. Of course I want the dears to have everything as they like, but I do wish sometimes they would be a little more help.”