Sparrows Part 41

The ices were taken away. Windebank went on talking.

"You've no idea how careful a chap with domestic instincts, who isn't altogether a pauper, has to be. Women make a dead set at him."

"Poor dear!" commented Mavis.

"Fact. You mayn't believe it, but every woman--nearly every woman he meets--goes out of her way to have a go at him."

"Nonsense!"

Windebank did not heed the interruption; he went on:

"Old Perigal, Charlie Perigal's father, is a rum old chap; lives alone and never sees anyone and all that. One day he asked me to call, and what d'ye think he said?"

"Give it up."

"Boy! you're commencing life, and you should know this: always bear in mind the value of money and the worthlessness of most women. Good-bye."

"What a horrid old man!"

"Yes, that's what he said."

"And do you bear it in mind?"

"Money I don't worry about. I've more than I know what to do with. As to women, I'm jolly well on my guard."

"You're as bad as old Perigal, every bit."

"But one has to be. Have some of these strawberries?"

"No, thank you."

"You ate 'em fast enough at Mrs What's-her-name's."

"It was different then."

"Yes, wasn't it? Take 'em away."

These last words were spoken to the waiters, who were now accustomed to removing the untasted dishes almost as soon as they were put upon the table.

"Have the coffee when it comes. It'll warm you for the fog outside."

"Thanks, I'm not used to coddling."

"Then you ought to be. But about what we were saying: then, I quite thought old Perigal a pig for saying that about women; now, I know he's absolutely right."

"Absolutely wrong."

"Eh!"

"Absolutely wrong. It's the other way about. It's men who're worthless, not poor women; and they don't care what they drag us down to so long as they get their own ends," cried Mavis.

"Nonsense!" he commented.

"I've been out in the world and have seen what goes on," retorted Mavis.

"It isn't my experience."

"Men are always in the right. No coffee, thank you."

"Sure?"

"Quite."

"No; it is not my experience," he went on. "Take the case of all the chaps I know who've married women who played up to them. Without exception they curse in their hearts the day they met them."

"If anything's wrong, it's owing to the husband's selfishness."

"Little Mavis--I'm going to call you that--you don't know what rot you're talking."

"Rot is often the inconvenient common sense of other people," commented Mavis.

"It isn't as if marriage were for a day," he went on, "or for a week, or two years. Then, it wouldn't matter very much whom one married. But it's for a lifetime, whether it turns out all right or whether it don't. What?"

"I see; you'd have men choose wives as you would a house or an umbrella," she suggested.

"People would be a jolly sight happier if they did," he replied, to add, after looking intently at Mavis: "Though, after all, I believe I'm talking rot. When one's love time comes, nothing else in the world matters; every other consideration goes phut, as it should."

"Goes what?"

"Goes to blazes, then, as it should."

"As it should," echoed Mavis.

"Dear little Mavis!" smiled Windebank, "But it's big Mavis now."

He called the waiter, to give him a note with which to pay the bill.

"What wicked waste!" remarked Mavis in an undertone.

"When it's been time spent with you?"

When the bill and the change were brought, Windebank would not look at either.

"How can you be so extravagant?" she murmured.

"When one's with you, it's a crime to think of anything else."

"What a good thing I'm leaving you!" she laughed.