“Having a son must mean educating oneself all over again. Cricket now! It’s the deadliest game. One goes to Lord’s for the frocks, and to meet friends and have tea, and see all the dear little top hats waved in the air at the end. I dote on enthusiasm; it goes to my head like wine. Every Eton and Harrow I wave and enthuse as wildly as if I’d ten sons on the winning side. But how on earth they can enjoy that everlasting running about over the same few yards, between the same old posts, hour after hour, day after day!” She shrugged expressively. “Well! I never look.”
“It’s worse when they talk about it!” Cassandra said. “When my boy is at home, he and his father talk cricket steadily through every meal. I am hopelessly out in the cold. I suppose it will grow worse as time goes on, and more masculine tastes develop.”
Grizel paused, cup in hand, to stare reflectively at the fire.
“Do you know that’s a subject which is exercising me very much! All my life until now I’ve lived with women, and been conversationally on my own ground, and now there’s Martin! We’ve got to have meals together, and depend on each other for conversation until death doth us part, and it’s a big proposition. Suppose he gets bored? Suppose I get bored? At present it’s such delight just to be together, that it doesn’t matter what we say. I could talk hats by the hour, and he would be patient, and he could prose about golf, and I’d murmur sympathetically in the pauses, and be quite happy just watching him, and thinking what a dear he was, but”—she put down her cup—“I’m not a child; I know that that stage must pass! It may be just as sweet to be together—it may be sweeter, but the novelty will pass... Tell me!” she bent forward, gazing in Cassandra’s face. “How soon does it pass?”
Again Cassandra was conscious of stiffened lips, of making a pretence at the answering smile.
“The time varies, but even in exceptional cases it is horribly soon. I was very young when I married. We were a big family at home, and very hard up. It was a revolutionary change to come almost straight from the schoolroom, and an allowance of a few shillings a week, to be mistress of the Court. I was wild with excitement, it seemed impossible that I could ever get blasé.”
“But you did?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How soon?”
“Very soon, I’m afraid. Incredibly soon.”