"That's the sort of thing a man says who hasn't married."
"My dear George, you cannot pretend your wife would prevent your reading Latin and Greek, or even Sanscrit. I am sure she would much sooner you read them than—well, than do other things you do do."
"I don't say she would prevent me," returns the lord of Surrenden, with some crossness, "but it's the kind of life one gets into that kills all that sort of thing in one. There is no time for it."
"I keep out of the life: why don't you?"
"There's no time for anything," says Usk, gloomily. "There's such heaps of things to see to, and such numbers of places to go to, and then one lives au jour le jour, and one gets into the swim and goes on, and then there's the shooting, and when there isn't the shooting there's the season, and the racing."
"I lead my own life," Brandolin remarks.
"Yes; but you don't mind being called eccentric."
"No; I don't mind it in the least. If they say nothing worse of me I am grateful."
"But you couldn't do it if you had all my places, and all my houses, and all my brothers, and all my family. You're a free agent. I declare that all the time goes away with me in such a crowd of worries that I've hardly a second to smoke a cigarette in, in any peace!"
Brandolin smiles.