“Haw! Well, Georgie, I am not so sure of that. My wife is absolute nature, sir, simple, absolute—haw—unartificial nature. But unartificial nature is, in my opinion—haw—yes, a very wise nature, sometimes.”
“Haw!” said his wife, exactly like him, while everybody laughed. Then she stood upon tiptoe to kiss him, she was so unartificial, even before the company. All the pretty airs and graces of a fair Parisian, combined with all the domestic snugness of an English wife! What a fine thing it is to have a yoke–mate with a playful, charming manner!
“Good–bye, Dr. Hutton. We are on the wing, as you are. I fear you will never forgive me for tarnishing your laurels so.”
Tarnishing laurels! What wonderful fellow so ingeniously mixed metaphors?
“Now or never,” thought Rufus Hutton; “she has beaten me at chess, she thinks. Now, Iʼll have the change out of her. Only let her lead up to it.”
“Mrs. Corklemore, we will fight it out, upon some future occasion. I never played with a lady so very hard to beat.”
“Ah, you mean at Nowelhurst. But we never go there now. There is—I ought to say, very likely, there are mistakes on both sides—still there seems to exist some prejudice against us.—Anna, dear, you put a lump of sugar too much in my tea. I am already too saccharine.”
“Well, dear, I put exactly what you always tell me. And you sent your cup for more afterwards.”
“Matter of fact animal—how can she be my sister?” Georgie only muttered this. Rufus Hutton did not catch it. Mr. Garnet would have done so.
“Now is the time,” thought Rufus again, as she came up to shake hands with him, not a bit afraid of the morning sun upon her smooth rich cheeks, where the colour was not laid on in spots, but seemed to breathe up from below, like a lamp under water. Outside he saw pet Polly scraping great holes in the gravel, and the groom throwing all his weight on the curb to prevent her from bolting homewards. “Hang it, she wonʼt stand that,” he cried; “her mouth is like a sea–anemone. Take her by the snaffle–rein. Canʼt you see, you fool, that she hasnʼt seven coats to her mouth, like you? Excuse my opening the window,” he apologized to Mrs. Corklemore, “and excuse my speaking harshly, for if I had not stopped him, he would have thrown my horse down, and I value my Polly enormously.”