Why don't you get married? then you wouldn't be alone, Geordie interposed, with ingenuity.
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Children, you are really too dreadful this evening! Miss Steet exclaimed.
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I shan't get marriedI want to have the hounds, proclaimed Geordie, who had apparently been much struck with his brother's explanation.
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I will come down afterwards, about half-past eight, if you will allow me, said Miss Steet, looking conscious and responsible.
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Very wellperhaps we can have some music; we will try something together.
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Oh, music we don't go in for music! said Geordie, with clear superiority; and while he spoke Laura saw Miss Steet get up suddenly, looking even less alleviated than usual. The door of the room had been pushed open and Lionel Berrington stood there. He had his hat on and a cigar in his mouth and his face was red, which was its common condition. He took off his hat as he came into the room, but he did not stop smoking and he turned a little redder than before. There were several ways in which his sister-in-law often wished he had been very different, but she had never disliked him for a certain boyish shyness that was in him, which came out in his dealings with almost all women. The governess of his children made him uncomfortable and Laura had already noticed that he had the same effect upon Miss Steet. He was fond of his children, but he saw them hardly more frequently than their mother and they never knew whether he were at home or away. Indeed his goings and comings were so frequent that Laura herself scarcely knew: it was an accident that on this occasion his absence had been marked for her. Selina had had her reasons for wishing not to go up to town while her husband was still at Mellows, and she cherished the irritating belief that he stayed at home on purpose to watch herto keep her from going away. It was her theory that she herself was perpetually at homethat few women were more domestic, more glued to the fireside and absorbed in the duties belonging to it; and unreasonable as she was she recognised the fact that for her to establish this theory she must make her
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