“No,” he answered, surprised. “I’m an only son—and rather a bad investment. Why?”
“There are eight of us,” said Prudence—“counting Bobby.”
“Who is Bobby?”
“He’s a dear,” she answered, as though that explained Bobby. “He’s at college: when he leaves he will have to go into the factory; and he hates it so. But there isn’t any help for it. He is the only Graynor to carry on.”
“I don’t think his case calls for sympathy exactly,” he remarked dryly, with a contemplative eye on the tall red chimneys, an eye that travelled slowly over the wide spring-clad countryside and came back to her face and rested there in quiet enjoyment.
“You don’t know,” she returned seriously, “how the kind of life we lead here stifles an imaginative person.”
“You find it dull?” he said. “I suppose it may be. Most country towns are dull.”
“The country isn’t to blame,” she explained; “it’s the routine of dull business, dull duties, dull pleasures, and duller people. You’ve no idea... How should you know? Virtue, as practised in Wortheton, is a quality without smiles, and enjoyment is sinful. Instead of idling happily here I ought to be at home sewing garments for the poor, like the others are doing. I shall be reproved for flaying truant... and I don’t care.”
She laughed joyously. Steele, ignoring the larger part of her communications, leaned towards her, intent on bringing her back to a particular phrase that stuck in his memory.
“Are you happy sitting here—with me?” he asked.