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"A poor joke, lass!" he observed, with the laugh dead in his throat. "It isn't a poor joke," said she. "It isn't a joke at all." "Didst thou seriously think as I should buy that there barracks to please thee?" "Certainly," she said, courageously. "Just that to please me." "I'm right enough where I am," he asserted, grimly. "What for should I buy Wilbraham Hall? What should I do in it?"
She had made a fool of herself and been made a fool of, and she had, it would be supposed, tried to make a fool of Committee 9 in order to spite Charles Wilbraham. She would be thought no gentleman, even no lady.
I can detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well if one may be permitted that rather opprobrious word." "Yes, indeed," Henry said. "It is precisely what Wilbraham has. I know it well."
But then all I did was to stare at something Collins was carrying carefully in his two hands. "What's that?" I said just to say something. "Some new kind of high explosive Wilbraham got to try and never did," Collins returned casually. "Saw it in his office to-night and thought it was better with us than with Macartney. Don't know just how it works, so I'm treating it gingerly."
"Live in it." "Trafalgar-road's good enough for me." "But it isn't good enough for me," said she. "I wouldna' ha' minded," he said, savagely "I wouldna' ha' minded going into a house a bit bigger, but " "Nothing is big enough for me except Wilbraham Hall," she said. He said nothing. He was furious.
And the fact was that, in his secret soul, he had decided to give way; he had decided that Helen, together with Helen's cooking, was worth to him the price of Wilbraham Hall. But when he saw her brusque, eager gesture, he began to reflect.
After you went off yesterday Wilbraham got to drinking; the wolves began to howl round the place after dark, and he said they drove him mad. He got a gun and went out after them and he never came back. I didn't even know he was gone till midnight. I thought he'd shut himself in his office as he often does, till I heard shots outside, and found he wasn't in the house.
It's largely put on.... I'm told. He likes to seem to know everything ... so I've heard." "A common peccadillo." The ex-cardinal waved it aside with a large and tolerant gesture. "But we do not, most of us, succeed in it." "Oh, Wilbraham doesn't succeed. Indeed no. Most people see at once that he is just a solemn ass. That face, you know ... like a mushroom...."
She told them so to their faces, which made them no brighter. And their county was worthy of them: no distinction in it no style simply land. But her wrath passed, or remained only as a graceful fretfulness. She made the house comfortable, and abandoned the farm to Mr. Wilbraham. With a good deal of care she selected a small circle of acquaintances, and had them to stop in the summer months.
We must all have our whipping-boys, our criminal suspects; without them sin and disaster would be too tragically diffused for our comfort. Henry Beechtree's suspect was Charles Wilbraham. He knew that he suspected Charles Wilbraham too readily; Wilbraham could not conceivably have committed all the sins of which Henry was fain to believe him guilty.