"Poor Amelia!" repeats he sharply; "why poor?—for being engaged to me? You are not very complimentary, Mrs. Byng."
She looks up friendlily at him. "For being engaged to you, or being only engaged to you?—which? I leave you a choice of interpretation."
But either Jim is too ruffled by the pity expressed in her tone towards his betrothed, or her remarks have provoked in him a train of thought which does not tend towards loquacity. The loud rooks, balancing themselves on improbably small twigs above their heads, and, hoarsely melodious, calling out their airy vernal news to each other, make for some time the only sound that breaks the silence of the cold spring afternoon. It is again Mrs. Byng who at last infringes it.
"If you and Willy are both going to Italy, why should not you go together?"
Jim does not immediately answer; the project is sprung upon him with such suddenness that he does not at once know whether it is agreeable to him or the reverse.
"You do not like the idea?" continues the mother, trying, not very successfully, to keep out of her tone the surprise she feels at his not having jumped at a plan so obviously to his own advantage.
"I did not say so. I did not even think so."
"Willy is an ideal fellow-traveller," says she, "excepting in the matter of punctuality; I warn you"—laughing—"that you would always have to drag him out of bed."
"But," suggests Jim slowly, "even supposing that I embraced your design with the warmth which I see you think it deserves, how can you tell that it would meet with his approbation? He has probably made up a party with some of the other innocent victims of a corrupt University system."
"No, he has not; the friend with whom he was to have gone has thrown him over; at least, poor man, that is hardly the way to express it, for he has broken his leg; but anyhow he is hors de combat. If you went with Willy," she adds, after a pause, and with a rather wistful air, "I should be sure of knowing if anything went wrong."