“I hope not,” said my wife. “You have got us into such comfortable quarters here, Mr. Kingsley, that I hope you will do nothing to tempt my husband farther. Go farther and fare worse, you know. Let well enough alone.”
“Oh. I beseech you!—two proverbs at a time will be fatal to one or other of us. Perhaps both. But he can not fare worse by going to Texas.”
“He will do well enough here.”
“Perhaps.”
“Recover your lands, for example, as a beginning.”
“Ah! now you would bribe me. That is certainly a suggestion to make me keep my tongue, at least until the verdict is rendered. 'Till then, you know, I shall make no permanent remove myself.”
“But do you mean to go before the trial?” I asked.
“Yes, for a couple of months or so. I should only get into some squabble with my opponents by remaining here; and I may be preparing for all of us by going in season. I will look out for a township, Mrs. Clifford, on the edge of some beautiful prairie, and near some beautiful river. Your husband has a passion for water prospects, I can tell you, and would become a misanthrope without them. I am doubtful if he will be happy, indeed, if not within telescope distance from the sea itself. I don't think that a river will altogether satisfy him.”
“Oh yes, THIS must;” and as she spoke she pointed to the fair glassy surface of the Alabama, as it stretched away, at intervals, in broad glimpses before our eyes.
“Well, we shall see; but I will make my preparations, nevertheless, precisely as if he were not likely to be content. I have formed to myself a plan for all of you. I must make a dear little colony of our own in Texas. We shall have a nest of the sweetest little cottages, each with its neat little garden. In the centre we shall have a neat little playground for our neat little children; on the hill a neat little church; in the grove a neat little library; on the river a neat little barge; and over this neat little empire, you, Lady Clifford, shall be the neat little empress.”