'You know,' thought Nevill, 'I was naturally made for a domestic man. I often feel as if I were really designed by Nature to wheel a perambulator, and go to market on wet days. True, I haven't been much of a stay-at-home. But then I was born at sea, while the vessel was in an all-plain-sail breeze, and it may be the initial motion I inherited from the ship at my birth has not yet been quite exhausted. However, I feel as if it was gradually dying out. Once having set the planets spinning round the sun, there is no reason why they should ever stop spinning. Once having set me sailing over the water in an all-plain-sail breeze, there are reasons why I should stop some time. First, I am not by any means a heavenly body. No one could, with justice, say my appearance is heavenly; and I know what my mind is like, and I answer myself for that--it is, in fact, a good deal in the other direction. But, you see, although I am not myself a heavenly body, I may be influenced by heavenly bodies. Now, I should not be at all surprised if such a heavenly body as Kate Osborne might not have a very important influence in causing my orbit gradually to contract until it became purely local, entirely centred by her. Should anyone say to me: "If you are by nature a domestic man, how is it you never found it out before? how is it you have not settled down?" I should reply, "Show me the man who never finds out anything new about himself, and I'll show you a fool, a monomaniac." To the second question I should say, "How on earth could a fellow like me, without a relative in the world, become domestic, unless he married? and how on earth could a fellow like me marry until he had found someone who would marry him, and whom he would marry?" 'I am sure I should make an excellent husband, for I know nothing whatever about household affairs. I don't know what milk is a-gallon, or blacking a-pound, or coals a-ton, or jam a-pot. I have been brought up on a bill of fare. I am the embodiment of a _table-d'hôte_. I have seen beef roasted on the prairie, but the whole carcase had been purchased for a bullet and a charge of powder--say a penny. I know such rates do not rule the London market. I heard them say the other day, at dinner, beef was a shilling a-pound; but how much a pound is, I haven't the ghost of an idea. Considering me as a domestic man, there's another good trait in my character; I don't know weights--I mean domestic weights--' 'Nevill, shall we have a cab?' asked Osborne, breaking in upon his musings. 'Of course, of course. What a stupid being I am! I was running astray, Osborne, a rare thing for me. Of course, call a cab. I haven't the ghost of an idea where this place is. No doubt we have turned our back on it, and are walking away from it. I don't often ruminate. The chances are, if I did, I should some day soon walk under the legs of omnibus horses, or be killed by a coster's barrow.' 'Where to, sir?' asked the cabby through the trap.