“I was trying to induce my wife to take a sail,” the lord was saying, “but she won’t. She is not a very good sailor, unless the sea has its best behaviour on.”
“Will you go to-morrow, Mrs. Mowbray?” asked the man in the glazed hat, who spoke and looked like a gentleman. “I will promise you perfect calmness. I am weather-wise, and can assure you this little wind will have gone down before night, leaving us without a breath of air.”
“I will go: on condition that your assurance proves correct.”
“All right. You of course will come, Mowbray?”
The lord nodded. “Very happy.”
“When do you leave Brighton, Mr. Mowbray?” asked one of the ladies.
“I don’t know exactly. Not for some days.”
“A muff as usual, Johnny,” whispered Tod. “That man is no lord: he is a Mr. Mowbray.”
“But, Tod, he is the lord. It is the one who travelled with us; there’s no mistake about that. Lords can’t put off their titles as parsons can: do you suppose his servant would have called him ‘my lord,’ if he had not been one?”
“At least there is no mistake that these people are calling him Mr. Mowbray now.”