“‘As how,’ again, Annie!”
“Well, sir, that’s just what mother means. You speak in one way and I in another. And your friends will laugh at my way of speaking, sir; they certainly will.”
“Let them laugh! Besides, we shall not see them, Annie; we shall live wholly apart from them, in some remote spot of our own.”
“Out o’ London, sir?”
“Out of London beyond a doubt. Is that any subject of regret?”
“Well—I should miss the streets, sir.”
“Miss the streets! Merciful heavens! To what a pass has the baneful disease of town life brought a pure and unsophisticated soul! But you have been in the country this morning early—the hem of the country at any rate. Did the freshness, the silence, the fragrance around you say nothing to your heart?”
“Well, no, sir. Where the growers are you don’t smell much else than manure; and there’s a steam pump always going fit to deafen you.”
“Well, well! But you must have seen the real country. I have taken you myself to Bushey and Thames Ditton. Surely you must see that the streets are the quintessence of vulgarity, of artificiality, of hideousness, of ludicrous effort?”
“If they’re as bad as that, sir, why do all the great ladies stay all the summer in ’em, when they might be in the country? Our little street ain’t much, for sure, but there’s a deal o’ neighbourliness in it; and I’m so used to listening for Sam’s growler rattlin’ home I don’t think sleep ’ud come to me without it.”