"Dependence is a disagreeable word," he said; "and one never quite knows what it means." "If you were a woman you'd know. It means that I must stay at Perivale on Sundays, while you can go up to London or down to Yorkshire. That's what it means." "What you do mean, I think, is this;--that you owe a duty to your aunt, the performance of which is not altogether agreeable. Nevertheless it would be foolish in you to omit it." "It isn't that;--not that at all. It would not be foolish, not in your sense of the word, but it would be wrong. My aunt has been kind to me, and therefore I am bound to her for this service. But she is kind to you also, and yet you are not bound. That's why I complain. You sail away under false pretences, and yet you think you do your duty. You have to see your lawyer,--which means going to your club; or to attend to your tenants,--which means hunting and shooting." "I haven't got any tenants." "You know very well that you could remain over Sunday without doing any harm to anybody;--only you don't like going to church three times, and you don't like hearing my aunt read a sermon afterwards. Why shouldn't you stay, and I go to the club?" "With all my heart, if you can manage it." "But I can't; we ain't allowed to have clubs, or shooting, or to have our own way in anything, putting forward little pretences about lawyers." "Come, I'll stay if you'll ask me." "I'm sure I won't do that. In the first place you'd go to sleep, and then she would be offended; and I don't know that your sufferings would make mine any lighter. I'm not prepared to alter the ways of the world, but I feel myself entitled to grumble at them sometimes."