“You aren’t like most girls. You’ve been brought up with men.”
“But, Bernard, Miss Laurenson is an heiress; she has eight hundred a year of her own, and more to come. Mrs. Merton told me so.”
“Has she? Well, eight hundred a year’ll come in handy; I’m glad to hear it. If it’s true, that is.”
“And she is very pretty, and she dresses well, and her family is unexceptionable,” pursued Dolly. “I expect she could marry a peer if she liked, or at any rate a courtesy title.”
“Yes, but all those titled chaps are pretty rotten,” said Bernard, cheerfully damning the aristocracy in a lump. “She’d do a sight better to take me. I’m pretty strong and free from vice, and sound in wind and limb; and as for family, I guess ours is good enough for anybody, isn’t it?”
Dolly was reduced to silence, but she was so completely preoccupied that she poured cream and sugar into Bernard’s cup and filled it up with beer, producing a mixture which he denounced in emphatic language and emptied out of the window. Presently she interrupted his talk about the farm by asking:
“Bernard, are you fond of her?”
“She’s getting a bit long in the tooth, it’s true, but she’s a pretty creature still. I guess she suits me as well as any,” was the surprising answer.
“I mean Miss Laurenson.”
“Oh, I thought you were talking about old Empress; I was.”