"I'm not sure that it isn't better than sitting at home and reading how well my old regiment is doing in South Africa. Besides, you know, I am writing a diary."
When Mrs. Fielden is provoking she always looks ten times prettier than she does at other times.
"A good many people in this little place," I said, "have made up their minds to 'do the work that's nearest' and to help 'a lame dog over stiles.' I think I should be rather a brute if I didn't respond to their good intentions."
"I don't think they need invent stiles, though!" said Mrs. Fielden quickly; "wood-carving, and beating brass, and playing the zither----"
"--are not stiles. They are making a sort of obstacle race of your life."
"Since I have begun to write the diary," I said, "I've been able to excuse myself attempting these things, even when tools are kindly brought to me. And, so far, no one has so absolutely forgotten that there is a lingering spark of manhood in me as to suggest that I should crochet or do cross-stitch."
"You know I am going to help to write the diary," said Mrs. Fielden, "only I'm afraid I shall have to go to all their tea-parties, shan't I, to get copy?"
"I'm dreadfully bored to-night; aren't you?" she said confidentially, and in a certain radiant fashion as distant as the Poles from boredom. "No one can really enjoy this sort of thing, do you think? It's like being poor, or anything disagreeable of that sort. People think they ought to pretend to like it, but they don't."
"I wish I could entertain you better," I said sulkily; "but I'm afraid I never was the least bit amusing."
Mrs. Fielden relapsed into one of her odd little silences, and I determined I would not ask her what she was thinking about.
Presently Colonel Jardine joined us, and she said to him: "Please see if you can get my carriage; it must be five o'clock in the morning at least." And the next moment I was made to feel the egotism of imagining I had been punished, when she bade me a charming "good-night." She smiled congratulations on her hostesses on the success of the party, and pleaded the long drive to Stanby as an excuse for leaving early. The Colonel wrapped her in a long, beautiful cloak of some pale coloured velvet and fur--a sumptuous garment at which young ladies in shawls looked admiringly--and Mrs. Fielden slipped it on negligently, and got into her brougham.