“I fancied Jane seemed to think a good deal about her.”
“Jane did think a good deal about her,” returned Mrs. Coney. “She has not had the experience of this sort of people that I have, Johnny; and girls’ sympathies are so easily aroused.”
“There was a romance about it, you see.”
“Romance, indeed!” wrathfully cried Mrs. Coney. “That’s what leads girls’ heads away: I wish they’d think of good plain sense instead. It was nothing but romance that led poor Lucy Ashton to marry that awful man, Bird.”
“Why does Lucy not leave him?”
“Ah! it’s easier to talk about leaving a man than to do it, once he’s your husband. You don’t understand it yet, Johnny.”
“And shall not, I suppose, until I am married myself. But Lucy has never talked of leaving Bird.”
“She won’t leave him. Robert has offered her—— Goodness me, Johnny, don’t hurry along like that! It’s nothing but ice here. If I were to get a tumble, I might be lamed for life.”
“Nonsense, Mrs. Coney! It would be only a Christmas gambol.”