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No matter," she added, "if Mr. Sherringham comes I won't act." "Won't you act for me?" "She'll act like an angel," Mrs. Rooth protested. "She might do, she might be, anything in all the world; but she won't take common pains." "Of one thing there's no doubt," said Miriam: "that compared with the rest of us poor passionless creatures mamma does know what she wants." "And what's that?"
"Did he say more than he can possibly mean when he took formal leave of you yesterday for ever and ever?" the old woman cried. On which Nick re-enforced her. "And don't you call that his taking formal leave a sacrifice?" "Oh he took it all back, his sacrifice, before he left the house." "Then has that no meaning?" demanded Mrs. Rooth. "None that I can make out," said her daughter.
What do you make of the inevitable sitter?" "Oh," answered Miriam, "you can say to the inevitable sitter, 'Hold your tongue, you brute!" "Isn't it a good deal in that manner that I've heard you address your comrades at the theatre?" Mrs. Rooth inquired. "That's why my heart's in my mouth." "Yes, but they hit me back; they reply to me comme de raison as I should never think of replying to Mr.
Miriam rested kind eyes on him. "Dear me, how you must hate me!" And before he had time to reply she went on to her mother: "People marry them to make them leave the stage; which proves exactly what I say." "Ah they offer them the finest positions," reasoned Mrs. Rooth. "Do you want me to leave it then?" "Oh you can manage if you will!" "The only managing I know anything about is to do my work.
Rooth raised her eyes at him as if recognising the force there might be in that, and he added: "Let her blaze out, let her look about her. Then you may talk to me if you like." "It's very puzzling!" the old woman artlessly sighed. He laughed again and then said: "Now don't tell me I'm not a good friend." "You are indeed you're a very noble gentleman. That's just why a quiet life with you "
It pleased her to hear this, and the spirit with which she interpreted the signs of the future and, during an hour he spent alone with her, Mrs. Rooth being upstairs and Basil Dashwood luckily absent, treated him to twenty specimens of feigned passion and character, was beyond any natural abundance he had yet seen in a woman.
"I should like to paint her portrait; she's made for that," Nick Dormer ventured to observe to Mrs. Rooth; partly because struck with the girl's suitability for sitting, partly to mitigate the crudity of inexpressive spectatorship. "So all the artists say. I've had three or four heads of her, if you would like to see them: she has been done in several styles.
It's you, on the contrary, who go down on your knees, who pour forth apologies about our being vagabonds." "Vagabonds listen to her! after the education I've given her and our magnificent prospects!" wailed Mrs. Rooth, sinking with clasped hands upon the nearest ottoman. "Not after our prospects, if prospects they be: a good deal before them.
Dormer, don't encourage her to be so dreadful; for it is dreadful, the way she talks," Mrs. Rooth broke in. "One would think we weren't respectable one would think I had never known what I've known and been what I've been." "What one would think, beloved mother, is that you're a still greater humbug than you are.
Rooth took an armful of novels and sat on a bench in the park, flanked by clipped hedges and old statues, while her young companions strolled away, walked to the Trianon, explored the long, straight vistas of the woods.
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