'
Elizabeth had been trying not to listen to him, but without
success.
'I'll look after that, Nutty. I have a little money saved up,
enough to pay off what you owe. I was saving it for something
else, but never mind.'
'Awfully good of you,' said Nutty, but his voice sounded almost
disappointed. He was in the frame of mind which resents alleviation
of its gloom. He would have preferred at that moment to be allowed to
round off the picture of the future which he was constructing in his
mind with a reel or two showing himself brooding in a cell. After
all, what difference did it make to a man of spacious tastes whether
he languished for the rest of his life in a jail or on a farm in the
country? Jail, indeed, was almost preferable. You knew where you were
when you were in prison. They didn't spring things on you. Whereas
life on a farm was nothing but one long succession of things sprung
on you. Now that Lord Dawlish had gone, he supposed that Elizabeth
would make him help her with the bees again. At this thought he
groaned aloud. When he contemplated a lifetime at Flack's, a lifetime
of bee-dodging and carpet-beating and water-lugging, and reflected
that, but for a few innocent words--words spoken, mark you, in a pure
spirit of kindliness and brotherly love with the object of putting a
bit of optimistic pep into sister!--he might have been in a position
to touch a millionaire brother-in-law for the needful whenever he
felt disposed, the iron entered into Nutty's soul.
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