The precipitant,
prideful, young fool! Why hadn't he held onto the merest memory, the
most distant chance in the world, of Mariana, rather than fling himself,
his injured self-opinion, into this stew?
"Don't say it can't be managed," she persisted. "Anything may. It's
absolutely necessary; you can get a prescription--two weeks of green
valley and robins and country eggs. Howat will take your money from you
at penny sniff, and I'll--I'll come out for dinner."
"Harriet thought of going back to the family," he replied; "but it
might--" he turned at last to Howat Penny. "Would you have me?" he asked
directly. What, in thunder, choice of reply did he have? Howat couldn't
point out the shamelessness of such an arrangement. Harriet, it seemed,
was not to be considered; just as if she were a merely disinterested
connection. He issued a belated period to the effect that Shadrach was
spacious and Rudolph a capable attendant. It was, he saw, sufficient.
"We can write," said Mariana. She endeavoured to caress Howat's hand,
but he indignantly frustrated her.
"I'll have to get back to the hearth," James Polder announced
regretfully. "It's been wonderful," he told Mariana Jannan. Howat
scraped his chair at the baldness of Polder's pleasure.
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