"In his opinion that would make one the less likely to have them, wouldn't it?" She tried very hard to keep so much as a suspicion of bitterness out of her tone, yet somehow it seemed almost impossible to do that.
"He's not exactly a fool. Nobody knows better than he that your Aunt Sanderson is more royalist than the king. And my view is that he and she have laid their heads together in order to work upon your scruples."
"Pray, why shouldn't they? Isn't it right that they should?"
"There you go!" he said sternly. "Now, look here." In the intensity of the moment his face was almost touching hers. "I'm next in at Bridport House, so this is my own private funeral. But I just want to say this. A man can't go knocking about the world in the way I have done without getting through to certain things. And as soon as that happens one no longer sees Bridport House at the angle at which it sees itself. White marble and precedence were all very well in the days of Queen Victoria, but they won't build airships, you know."
"I never heard of a duchess building airships."
"It's the duke who is going to do the building. The particular hobo I'm figuring on has got to take a hand in all sorts of stunts at this moment of the world's progress which will make his distinguished forbears turn in their graves, no doubt. It seems to me he's got to do a single on the big time, as they say in vaudeville, and the finest girl in the western hemisphere must keep him up to his job."
"'Some' talk," said Mary, with a smile rather drawn and constrained.
"You see"—the force of his candor amused her con-
