There wasn't. David did not know. Mary did not know. They looked at each other across the table, then David sat down and buried his face in his hands, half laughing, half miserable.
It really was funny. The whole thing was funny. Mrs. Bannister's frigid face and the nodding osprey in her bonnet, and her nervous little husband clucking like a distracted hen in the background. And David, he was funny too, swooping down out of the darkness upon Mrs. Robson, and cramming his social ideas into Sarah Bannister's inhospitable brain, or lack of brain—anyone so hopelessly enslaved to tradition must lack brain. He could see again his lean arms swaying and the tuft of hair rising with enthusiasm from his forehead.
It was always rather a trial to David that he could not help seeing how funny he had been when it was too late to alter things.
"You're not going to be sick again, are you?" asked Mary anxiously.
"No, I don't think so. I'm not feeling ill now. Only penitent. I'm not even surprised. I never am where I've done anything outrageous because I'm always doing it. I talked rather like that one night at Oxford when my father came as the 'distinguished visitor' to the Union. He's a Tory M.P. you know. And after that we had a scene." David's eyes twinkled at the recollection, though he found it sobering too, for he was as fond of his father as he could be of anyone so alien to his ideal of life. "And he said that if this was what I was learning at Oxford I should be better away from it. And he'd only pay my fees if I'd promise to stop propagating scurrilous politics. And of course I couldn't, and there we were—and here I am. I can't think why I'm talking like this about myself. You must be sick of the sight and sound of me."
"I'm not. You're very young. You can't help it."
"So you see I must leave you and to-night. I'd clear out of the village if I could, only it's the very centre of this part of the wolds and I've got to start somewhere—and even if I didn't some one else would."
"It's all right, Mr. Rossitur. You can't help it. You're made like that. After all I suppose it's far better to be carried away by your ideas than to have no ideas at all."
It was just then that John came in. He was in a hearty mood.
"Going, Rossitur? Now why ever?"