“’Cos he’s the cussedest crank in all Judee! Let Ronnie please himself and get me the Massarene dollars. I’ll give you half I get; and I sha’n’t know whether she’s a snub nose or a straight one.”
Mouse colored with anger. There are things when however necessary it may be to do them, cannot be spoken of without offence.
“How odiously coarse you grow,” she observed with severity.
“Oh, bother! you call a spade a spade fast enough sometimes. How you do make me think of my old granny Luce!”
“In what do I resemble your old granny Luce?”
Brancepeth was mute. To repeat what his maternal grandmother had said would not pour oil on troubled waters. What the very free-spoken and sharp-tongued old Lady Luce had said was this, when Brancepeth was still in the sixth form at Eton:
“You’re such a pretty boy, Harry, the women-folks will be after you like wasps after treacle; take my advice, whatever you do steer clear of the married ones. A married woman always has such a lot of trumps up her sleeve. She sticks like a burr: you can pay off a wench, but you can’t pay off her; and if her fancy-man tries to get away she calls in her husband and there’s the devil and all to pay. Don’t you forget that, Harry.”
But he had forgotten it.
“I think I’ll go up and see the little beggars,” he said, to make a diversion; and he slipped away before she could stop him and went up, four stairs at a time, to the nurseries. There he was extremely popular and much beloved, especially by Jack; and there he was perfectly happy, being a young man of simple tastes, limited intelligence, and affectionate disposition.
He was in the midst of an uproarious game of romps there one day, when Cocky looked in from the doorway with an odd little smile.