"You don't object to my lookin' round to speak about it, Master Titus?"
"Not a bit, John! Please speak. What is it?"
A gentle reproachfulness was on Mr. Eldridge as he answered: "No—come, I say, now—no gammon, suppose!" And Challis really commiserated him. What a position to be in! To be sent round by your wife, in the legitimate exercise of her omnipotence, to lecture a neighbour believed to be involved in a quarrel with his! And that, too, when you happen to have, from no fault of your own, but from predestination, a short supply of words, and defective powers of construction. Challis appreciated the position quite clearly, and decided to be good-natured. After all, it was that detestable meddlesome Charlotte, not her booby husband himself—most probably—that had organized this expedition into his territory.
"All right, John!" said he. "No gammon, suppose! I know what you want to speak about. Marianne."
"Well, you know!" says John ruefully, "my idear was Charlotte should come herself. Much better idear!"
"What for? Very happy to see her, of course!"
"Well, you know, Master Titus, that's just what I keep on sayin' to Charlotte, that it's no concern of either of ours."
"Sharp chap!" This is interjected privately. So far as it reaches the audience, it seems to be accepted as laurels. "Now, suppose you and Charlotte were to take a holiday, and just leave me and Marianne to fight it out our own way. We shan't quarrel."
Mr. Eldridge became snugly confidential. "There, now, Master Titus, isn't that exactly what I said to Lotty? The very words! 'You leave them to fry their own fish,' I said." Challis thought of his philosophical friends at Royd; here was a new definition of identity wanted! "'You leave them to fry their own fish.' It's what I've been sayin' all along. But when females get an idea, you may just talk to 'em. Nothin' comes of it...."
"What was her idea?"