You'd want women for that. I'd
love to start life from the very beginning as it ought to be--nothing
squalid--but great halls and gardens and splendid men and women. But
you--you only like Law Courts!"
"And would you really be content without pretty frocks and sweets and
all the things young ladies like?" asked Mr. Perrott, concealing a
certain amount of pain beneath his ironical manner.
"I'm not a young lady," Evelyn flashed; she bit her underlip. "Just
because I like splendid things you laugh at me. Why are there no men
like Garibaldi now?" she demanded.
"Look here," said Mr. Perrott, "you don't give me a chance. You think we
ought to begin things fresh. Good. But I don't see precisely--conquer a
territory? They're all conquered already, aren't they?"
"It's not any territory in particular," Evelyn explained. "It's the
idea, don't you see? We lead such tame lives. And I feel sure you've got
splendid things in you."
Hewet saw the scars and hollows in Mr. Perrott's sagacious face relax
pathetically. He could imagine the calculations which even then went on
within his mind, as to whether he would be justified in asking a woman
to marry him, considering that he made no more than five hundred a
year at the Bar, owned no private means, and had an invalid sister to
support. Mr. Perrott again knew that he was not "quite," as Susan stated
in her diary; not quite a gentleman she meant, for he was the son of a
grocer in Leeds, had started life with a basket on his back, and now,
though practically indistinguishable from a born gentleman, showed his
origin to keen eyes in an impeccable neatness of dress, lack of freedom
in manner, extreme cleanliness of person, and a certain indescribable
timidity and precision with his knife and fork which might be the relic
of days when meat was rare, and the way of handling it by no means
gingerly.
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