She pronounced a single word, his own word:
He was standing before her on the hearthrug. He made a turn and at once turned back. “Are you thinking of this seriously?”
He began to fill his pipe with very slow movements of his fingers, his eyes bent down upon her. “And you called this--just now--a small thing?”
She said with a sudden eagerness, “Harry, it’s a very big thing for me, for Field’s. I meant a small thing in the sense not to be made a fuss about.”
He made very slowly a negative movement with his head. “I don’t see it like that.”
She told him how the great possibilities of the department she had established in the bank rested on the personal touch established between herself and the clients. The scheme was that those possibilities should be developed to their fullest extent. While she was in London that personal touch could be established with clients by dozens. If she visited the branches in the East, at Bombay, at Rangoon, at Singapore, it was by hundreds that the touch could be established. That was it. Field’s customers would talk to her, and when she was returned they would talk of her, and would tell others of her, as one met, not during the jolly freedom of leave when the impulse was to feel that, after all, nothing mattered much, but met out there when they were in the yoke and the harness of the thing,--met as one fresh out from home in their particular interests and shortly, charged with their special interests, returning home. That was it! A novel mission, a valuable mission, her mission. About a year. To start in about six weeks. “There, Harry, that’s the plan.”
She spoke. “I think I do not like your astonishment, Harry.”
“No, no; not justified. When you told me of a possibility of Singapore for you I was not astonished. I made no difficulty.”
“Not different, Harry. The same. How different? If you could go, I can go. The same. Aren’t things with us always the same?”
He shook his head. “Not this. If I had to go--”
“Yes, yes. It’s the point. If you had to go you’d have to go. Well, I have to go.”
“Rosalie, if I had to go I could go. A man can.”
She cried, “But, Harry, that--This isn’t us talking at all. You mean a man can leave his home because his home can go on without him. But our home--it’s just the same for me in our home. We’ve made it like that. It runs itself. The kitchen--I don’t know when I last gave an order. The children--there’s never a word. The thing’s organised. I’m an organiser.” She laughed, “Dear, that’s why they’re sending me. Isn’t it organised?”