He acknowledged that, having chosen her role, she played it well.  She made him comfortable.  She was a good housekeeper, and a fair organizer generally.  She knew how to be well served.  He thought that her manner to servants was often inexcusable, but she “kept” her servants, and they would “do anything” for her.  Further, except that she could not shine in conversation, she was a good hostess.  She never made mistakes, never became muddled, never forgot.  Of course she had friends to whom he was indifferent or perhaps slightly hostile, but she was entitled to her friends, as he to his.  And she was a good mother.  Stranger still, though she understood none of the arts and had no logical taste, she possessed a gift of guessing or of divination which, in all affairs relating to the home, was the practical equivalent of genuine taste.  George had first noticed this faculty in her when she put a thousand pounds of her money to a thousand pounds of his stepfather’s and they began to buy furniture.  The house was beautifully furnished, and she had done her share.  And in the alterations, additions, and replacements which for several years she had the habit of springing upon him, she rarely offended him.  Still, he knew indubitably that she had not taste,—­anyhow in his sense of the term,—­and would never, never acquire it.  An astonishing creature!  He had not finished being astonished at her.  In some respects he had not even come to a decision about her.  For instance, he suspected that she had “no notion of money,” but he could not be sure.  She did what she liked with her own income, which was about two hundred a year; that is to say, she clothed herself out of it.  Her household accounts were unknown to him; he had once essayed to comprehend them, but had drawn back affrighted.

“Well,” she said plaintively.  “Now you’re here, I think you might sit a bit with me.  It’s most awfully lonely for me.”

“I can’t possibly,” he said, with calm.  “I have to rush off to the club to see Davids about that business.”

She ignored his inescapable duties!  It was nothing to her that he had a hundred affairs to arrange before his night-journey to the north.  She wanted him to sit with her.  Therefore she thought that he ought to sit with her, and she would be conscious of a grievance if he did not.  ‘Lonely!’ Because the children were going out for an hour or so!  Besides, even if it was lonely, facts were facts, and destiny was destiny and had to be borne.

“What business?”

“You know.”

“Oh!  That!...  Well, can’t you go after tea?”

Incurable!

“Here, lass!” he said, with a laugh.  “If I stop arguing here I shall miss him.”