“Certainly I do.  And I don’t intend to wait very much longer.  I am heartily tired of Lady Baldock, and though I can generally escape among my friends, that is not sufficient.  I am beginning to think that it would be pleasant to have a house of my own.  A girl becomes such a Bohemian when she is always going about, and doesn’t quite know where any of her things are.”

Then there was a silence between them for a few minutes.  Violet Effingham was doubled up in a corner of a sofa, with her feet tucked under her, and her face reclining upon one of her shoulders.  And as she talked she was playing with a little toy which was constructed to take various shapes as it was flung this way or that.  A bystander looking at her would have thought that the toy was much more to her than the conversation.  Lady Laura was sitting upright, in a common chair, at a table not far from her companion, and was manifestly devoting herself altogether to the subject that was being discussed between them.  She had taken no lounging, easy attitude, she had found no employment for her fingers, and she looked steadily at Violet as she talked,—­whereas Violet was looking only at the little manikin which she tossed.  And now Laura got up and came to the sofa, and sat close to her friend.  Violet, though she somewhat moved one foot, so as to seem to make room for the other, still went on with her play.

“If you do marry, Violet, you must choose some one man out of the lot.”

“That’s quite true, my dear, I certainly can’t marry them all.”

“And how do you mean to make the choice?”

“I don’t know.  I suppose I shall toss up.”

“I wish you would be in earnest with me.”

“Well;—­I will be in earnest.  I shall take the first that comes after I have quite made up my mind.  You’ll think it very horrible, but that is really what I shall do.  After all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse.  You don’t take your house because it’s the best house in the world, but because just then you want a house.  You go and see a house, and if it’s very nasty you don’t take it.  But if you think it will suit pretty well, and if you are tired of looking about for houses, you do take it.  That’s the way one buys one’s horses,—­and one’s husbands.”

“And you have not made up your mind yet?”

“Not quite.  Lady Baldock was a little more decent than usual just before I left Baddingham.  When I told her that I meant to have a pair of ponies, she merely threw up her hands and grunted.  She didn’t gnash her teeth, and curse and swear, and declare to me that I was a child of perdition.”

“What do you mean by cursing and swearing?”

“She told me once that if I bought a certain little dog, it would lead to my being everlastingly—­you know what.  She isn’t so squeamish as I am, and said it out.”

“What did you do?”