'That is a disease that I daresay does not hinder you all from amusing yourselves,' returns she sarcastically.
'Amusing ourselves? Oh yes, very well. I do not complain.'
There is such an obviously true ring about the depression with which this announcement of his contentment with his lot is uttered, that even she can no longer doubt of its reality. So he is not happy with his Betty after all! And a very good thing, too! Serve him right! But perhaps the discovery tends to mollify a little the tone of her next observation.
'Are you thinking how badly we want mowing?' she asks, her eyes following the direction of his, which are absently bent upon the sward, to-day not shorn to quite its usual pitch of velvet nicety. 'So we do, indeed. But Jacob has unluckily fallen ill, just as milady lent me the machine, and there it and the pony stand idle, and we'—regretfully eyeing her domain—'are, as you see, like a hay-meadow.'
Talbot does not speak for a moment. A great idea is labouring its way to birth in his mind—an idea that may give him a better foothold here than any casually escaped fox or precarious porterage of messages can ever do.
'Why should not I mow?' asks he at last.
'You?'
'Yes, I; and you lead the pony.'
She looks at him, half inclined to be angry.
'Is that a joke?'