"You never understand anything without being told," she said.

"Don't you know that I positively hate the life I live now ?" "I can quite believe it," said Hugh Chesyl.

"But, if you will allow me to say so, I think your remedy would be worse than the disease.

Your utmost ingenuity will fail to persuade me that the life of a farmer's wife would suit you." "I should like the simplicity of it," she maintained.
"And getting up at five in the morning to make the butter?
And having a hulking brute of a husband--like Jeff Ironside--tramping into your kitchen with his muddy boots and beastly clothes (which you would have to mend) just when you had got things into good order?
I can see you doing it!" Hugh Chesyl's speech went into his easy, high-bred laugh.
"You of all people--the dainty and disdainful Miss Elliot, for whom no man is good enough!" "I don't know why you say that." There was quick protest in the girl's voice.

She clattered the cups and saucers as if something in the lazy argument had exasperated her.