“Thanks,” replies Bertram, distantly. “Don’t say ‘as how,’ Annie. You are heavily laden this morning.”
“Oh, no, sir. Primroses have no roots; they make a fine show, but they don’t weigh naught.”
“Like the party of which they are the emblem.”
Annie smiles, in entire ignorance of his meaning, and sits down by him, planting her baskets on the ground.
“These aren’t very good flowers,” she says, regretfully, “the rain’s spiled ’em. They’ll do to put at the horses’ ears. Why do they put ’em at the horses’ ears, sir? I asked a groom onst, and he says, says he, it means that when our party come back to office we’ll take the tax off horses. Is that so, sir?”
“They are not only at the horses’ ears, but at the asses’ button-holes!” says Bertram. “As for taxation, it is the arc of Toryism.”
“Dear me!” he thinks, “why will she sit down by me? With all the will in the world one cannot but fret occasionally at their manners, though of course manner is only the shell, and ought not to weigh with one!”
Annie is meanwhile making some primroses up into a bunch. “What had you said to mother?” she asks. “Her back was quite set up, like.”
“Your mother,” replies Bertram, “is the most estimable and indefatigable of persons, but she has the taint of painfully narrowed and archaic views: she persists in considering herself of an inferior class; she persists in speaking of ‘quality,’ by which she means the patrician order, as something superhuman and alien to herself. It distresses me.”
“Oh, yes! Mother’s always going on about our engagement. She says as how——”