"Lean on me more heavily—we shall soon be there. You think we should be brutes too? Probably. We seem to be all brutes for each other—that's the charming way this competitive world is managed. So you have been looking after some of the old people, have you? You must have had a dull time of it this last three weeks—don't think I don't know that!"
He spoke with emotion. He thought he felt her grasp waver a little on his arm, but she did not speak.
"Suppose—when this business was over—I were to cut the whole concern—let the pits and the house, and go right away? I daresay I could."
"Could you?" she said eagerly.
"We shouldn't get so much money, you know, as in the best years. But then it would be certain. What would you say to a thousand a year less?" he asked her, trying to speak lightly.
"Well, it doesn't seem easy to get on with what we have—even if we had it," she said sharply.
He understood the reference to his mother's debts, and was silent.
But evidently the recollection, once introduced, generated the usual heat and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly said, with an acerbity he had not heard for some weeks:
"Of course, to have a country house, and not to be able to spend a farthing upon it—to ask your friends, or have anything decent—is enough to make anyone sick of it. And, above all, when we needn't have been here at all this October—"
She stopped, shrinking from the rest of the sentence, but not before he had time to think, "She say that!—monstrous!"