“I don’t wonder!”
“Good gracious me, why?”
“Look at your face! You are a woman now, my good Gwen.”
“And is this the first result? God help us! Is my one pride in life to become a thorn in my flesh?”
“That’s as you take it! It will, unless you are careful, be a very considerable thorn in other people’s. Good gracious, child, why even virtue in women is very much a matter of temperament, and where the temperament is, there will the opportunities be gathered together.”
CHAPTER XLIII.
Late one afternoon, two men, looking unspeakably battered, got into a fly at a small off station and told the man to drive them to Strange Hall.
“I’ll not show to a soul for a week,” said the first man, who, if one looked at him microscopically, seemed like the remains of Strange, “never in all my life have I felt so humiliated. To be held by the leg by a parcel of niggers for the best part of four months, and at my age, is too much for any fellow.”
“You were next to off your head most of the time, and then only for us you’d have escaped long ago,” said Brydon.
“Don’t try to find excuses, it’s too damnable altogether, and to think after all that those idiots got home months sooner, laden with ivory!”