Spring Days | Page 8

fellow."
"That's what I say, I wish she'd never met the fellow, and she never
would had it not been for that horrible Southdown Road. Southwick has
never been the same since those villas were put up."
"I know nothing about them; I won't know them. I don't go to the
Horlocks because I may meet people there I don't want to know. If you
hadn't allowed the girls to go there, she never would have met him."
"But we had to call on the Horlocks. Every Viceroy that ever came to
India called upon her, and they're excellent people--titled people come
down from London to see them: but I daresay their banking accounts
wouldn't bear looking into. She walks about the green with the
chemist's wife, and has the people of the baths to dinner.
Mostextraordinary woman. I like her, I enjoy her society; but I can't
follow her in her opinions. She says that only men are bad; that all
animals are good; that it is only men who make them bad. Her views on
hydrophobia are most astonishing. She says it is a mild and easy death,
and sees no reason why the authorities should attempt to stamp it out.
She quite frightened me with the story she told me of a mad dog that
died in her arms. But that by the way. The point is not now whether she
is right to feed mice in her bedroom instead of getting rid of them, but
whether we should call on people we don't want to know because she
asks us to do so. I say we should not. When she spoke to me the other
day about the lady whose mother was a housemaid, I said, 'My dear
Mrs. Horlock, it is very well for you to call on those people. I approve
of, I admire magnanimity; but what you can do I cannot do. You have
no daughters to bring out; every Viceroy that ever came to India called
on you, your position in the world is assured, your friends will not
think the less of you no matter how intimately you know the chemist's
wife, but you could not do these things if you had daughters to bring

out.'"
"What did she say to that?"
"She was just going out to walk with her pugs. Angel began to--you
know, and for the moment she could think of nothing else; when the
little beast had finished I had forgotten the thread of my argument.
However, I spoke to her about Grace; and she promised that she
shouldn't meet the fellow again. I can't think of his name, I get lost in
the different names, and they are all so alike I scarcely know one from
the other. I have had nothing but trouble since your poor mother died.
Your sisters give me a great deal of trouble, and you have given me a
great deal of trouble. We couldn't get on in business together on
account of your infernal slowness. No man is more for keeping his
accounts and letters straight than I, but your exactitude drives me mad;
it drives me mad; there you are at it again. I should like to know what
you are copying into that diary. One would think you were writing an
article for the Times, from the care with which you're drawing out
every letter; 'pon my word it isn't writing at all, it's painting. You can't
write for a pair of boots without taking a copy of the letter, entering it
into this book, and entering it into that book; 'pon my word it is
maddening."
Willy laughed. "Each person has his own way of doing business; I don't
see how it interferes with you, or what difference it makes to you, if I
spend three minutes or three days writing a letter."
"Perhaps not, perhaps not; but I am terribly upset about Grace," said Mr.
Brookes, and he walked slowly across the room and stood looking at
his Bouguereau; "she'll get over it, but in any case she'll miss her
chance of marrying Berkins; that is what distresses me. The man stinks
of money. I hear that he has been appointed manager of a colliery, that
alone will bring him another thousand a year. His business is going up,
he must be worth now between seven and eight thousand a year. And
he began as an office boy, he hadn't a penny piece, made it all himself."
"So I should think; a purse-proud ass!"

"Never mind, his eight thousand is as good an eight thousand as any in
the land, better than a great many. I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers
for your broken-down landowners; Berkins has always made excellent
investments, and I hear he is