“You won’t expect much of me?” he said, with his glass in his eye, looking vaguely down the river. “My wretched health, you know; er—there’s one good thing about it for you—I may kick over the bucket any day; one lung gone, you know.”
“Yes,” replied his companion; “I’ve always heard so. But you’ll let me hang on my own hook, drive my own team, won’t you?”
Cocky nodded. He perfectly understood the allegorical phrases.
“Oh, Lord, yes,” he made answer. “I’m a very easy-going fellow. Take my own way and let other people take theirs.”
“I warn you I shall take mine,” said the young beauty—she looked him full in the eyes. Cocky’s own pale, drowsy eyes looked back into hers with so cynical a smile in them that for once she was disconcerted.
“Lord, what’ll that matter to me?” he responded candidly. “I only marry to make the Pater come down with the flimsy. We shall have to agree over financial questions, you and I, that’s all. Most married people only meet over the accounts, you know.”
The young lady laughed.
“Very well, then. If you see it in that sensible light, we’ll say it’s concluded.”
Cocky had a gleam of conscience in his brandy-soaked soul. “You might do better, you know,” he said slowly. “You’re awfully fetching and you’re very young, and I’m—well, I’m a bad lot—and—and wretched health, you know.”
“I know; but you suit me,” said his companion with brevity. “I shall have the jewels, sha’n’t I?”