“My—my dear Susie, I assure you that that description doesn’t apply to England. There, unless she’s a wife, a woman isn’t happy.”
“Then in England women are more unhappy than in the country from which I come. I will not go there. I will not go to any place where there are wives.”
She strode past me as I stared at her, thunderstruck. I continued thunderstruck when she had gone.
She had a deal to learn.
That night I slept badly. In the morning I was roused by someone hammering at the door.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, sir; Holley. The cutter’s gone.”
“What!”
“The cutter’s gone. And the watch is hocussed.”
I was standing at the door in my nightshirt.