"Marriage with one man's no worse than marriage with another, the way they all are," said Ellen darkly, and got back to her argument. "And hating the Scotch and democracy, and saying blunt foolish things as if they were blunt wise ones--that's not sense. And if it were, what's the good of living to be sensible? It's like living to have five fingers on your hand. And life's so short! Mr. James, does it never worry you dreadfully that life is so short? I wonder how we all bear up about it. One ought to live for adventure. I want to go away, right away. There are such lots of lovely places where there are palms, and people get romantically shot, and there's a town somewhere where poppies grow on the roofs of mosques. I would like to see that. And queer people--masked Touaregs--" "Lassie, you are blethering," said Mr. Mactavish James, "this is a pairfect salad of foreign pairts." It had to come out. "Mr. Yaverland says Peru is lovely. He has been both sides of the Andes. He liked Peru. There are silver mines at Iquique and etairnal spring at the place whose name I have forgotten. Funny that I should forget the name of the one place on airth where there is etairnal spring! If I had all the money in the world I would not be able to go there because I have forgotten its name!" She laughed sobbingly, and went on. "And he's been in Brazil. He lived for a time in Rio de Janeiro." She stared fixedly at her mental image of the fateful house where there was a broken statue on a bier, shook herself, and went on. "And he's travelled in the forest. He's seen streams covered with the big leaves of Victoria Regia like they have it in the Botanical Gardens, and egrets standing on the bank, and better there than in ladies' hats. I wonder if I would be a fool if I had the money?--if I would wear dead things on my head? But indeed there are ways I think I would always be nice, however rich I was--ways that don't affect me very much, so that they're no sacrifice. And he's seen lots of things. Sloths, which I always thought were just metaphors. And ant-eaters, and alligators, and jaguars. And--" "If you go to London," said Mr. Mactavish James, "you'll be losing your heart to a keeper at the Zoo." "Who's losing their heart to anybody?" she asked peevishly. "And you needn't sneer. He's done lots else besides just seeing animals. Once he steered a ship in the South Seas for two days and two nights when the crew were down with the New Guinea fever. And another time he was working at a mine in Andalusia. The miners went on strike. He and some other men put up barricades and took guns. They defended the place. He is the first man I have ever known who did such things. And they come natural to him. He thinks no more of them than your son," she said nastily, "thinks of playing a round on the Gullane links." "Imphm. I wonder what he's been doing traiking about like this. Rolling stones gather no moss, I've heard."