"Why cannot you be satisfied with this morning's arrangements?" she asks, demurring; the recollection of his reported insult rankling in her mind.
He shrugs his shoulders expressively. "If you had had three fourths of 'Le Follet' and half the Morning Post poured into your reluctant ears, as I have, you would not have asked that question."
"If you have heard half the Morning Post, is it not a thousand pities that you should not hear the other half?" she inquires, drily.
They have reached the T.-cart, the big black horse, the baby-tiger; in the low, red sun the new harness shines brightly.
"I almost wish you could sprain your other ankle," Gerard says, recovering his good humour. "As long as you were lame, you were much more amiable."
Ten minutes more, and the Melford steep street and railway bridge are left behind them, they are trotting with smooth briskness between the nutty, briary hedgerows. At first the silence which Gerard had guaranteed threatens to remain unbroken; it is infringed at last by Esther, out of whose heart the fair late breeze, the happy yellow stillness, and lastly, the proximity to and solitude with the beloved one, are smoothing all angry creases. ("If he did speak lightly of me," she thinks, sorrowfully, "we shall not have the chance of many more drives together; whether he think ill or well, highly or meanly, of me, let me be happy with him while I may!")
"What a pleasant vehicle this would be to make a driving tour in!"
"A tour of all the cathedral towns throughout England, as the Heir of Redclyffe proposed spending his honeymoon in making!"
She laughs.
"I remember long ago the Saturday Review saying of some she-novelist's men, that they were like old governesses in trousers: it was not a bad simile, was it?"