“No, but really;—isn’t it, you know, after all?”
Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly.
“Isn’t it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a matter? There, Jack! I tell you! If I could choose, I would choose Pussy from all the pretty girls in the world.”
“But you have not got to choose.”
“That’s what I complain of. My dead and gone father and Pussy’s dead and gone father must needs marry us together by anticipation. Why the—Devil, I was going to say, if it had been respectful to their memory—couldn’t they leave us alone?”
“Tut, tut, dear boy,” Mr. Jasper remonstrates, in a tone of gentle deprecation.
“Tut, tut? Yes, Jack, it’s all very well for you . You can take it easily. Your life is not laid down to scale, and lined and dotted out for you, like a surveyor’s plan. You have no uncomfortable suspicion that you are forced upon anybody, nor has anybody an uncomfortable suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you are forced upon her. You can choose for yourself. Life, for you , is a plum with the natural bloom on; it hasn’t been over-carefully wiped off for you —”
“Don’t stop, dear fellow. Go on.”
“Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings, Jack?”
“How can you have hurt my feelings?”
“Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill! There’s a strange film come over your eyes.”