"That's where you are wrong," said Madge. "You have to go to Golspie before you begin."
"I don't want to begin. I want to get there. Don't you?"
Madge put on the woeful face that always introduced Ellesdee.
"I don't like the ticket man at King's Cross," she said. "I don't think he is what he seems."
Evelyn had eaten by this time all the crust off a Hovis loaf.
"More crust," he said. "There isn't any. Very good; marmalade in a spoon. But I won't distend my--my _vie intérieure_ with crumb. About the ticket man. You are wrong if we are generous to Lady Dover with regard to the length of our visit. Why mince matters? Can we afford it? I say 'Yes.' Board wages for our enormous establishment here. Tickets for ourselves, third class--I wish there was a fourth or fifth--and what's the dem'd total, as Mr. Mantalini said. Besides these"--Evelyn waved his hand like a man commanding millions--"these are temporary economies. The pink and butter-coloured is going to visit these classic abodes in October, and if orders don't pour in like our own leaky roof, I'll eat all the gamboge in my paintbox. I can't say fairer. And as I don't possess gamboge," he added, "the bet finds no takers. I give you that information, for though I am poor, I am honest."
Evelyn proceeded to eat marmalade with a spoon.
"It will be very _chic_, if you come to think of it," he said. "Probably several ladies' maids and valets will arrive with their respective owners by the same train. You, Madge, will flirt with one or two of the valets, and I with several of the ladies' maids. The scene then is shifted to Golspie station. You squeeze the hands of the valets on the platform, and I gaze into the eyes of the ladies' maids. The sumptuous motor has come for Lady Dover's guests. We strive to subdue--quite ineffectually--our air of conscious superiority, and squeeze the hands of Dukes and Duchesses. Then they will know us in our true colours. Triumphal explosion of the motor-car. The valets and ladies' maids are saved. Hurrah for the lower classes! Another cup of tea, please. Right up to the top. And the point is the fare to Golspie. Arrived there, we shall have no more food and drink to buy."
The reasoning was inevitable; given that domestic economy could manage it, there was no reason that could reasonably indicate King's Road instead. Yet, even after the A.B.C. had added its voice to the overmastering argument, Madge hesitated. She could not quite see her husband among the surroundings that awaited her there. She had been there before, and knew. How would he and that particular _milieu_ suit each other? All this was secondary to her original desire to go; her private, incommunicable feeling that such a visit would _poser_ them--for she could not have been Lady Ellington's daughter so long without that point of view having soaked into her--was paramount, but the other was there, and the complication in her mind was that though she wished, taking the reasons all round, to leave this hot house which still was intertwined with exquisite and undying memories, she could not see how Evelyn should wish to leave this, not having her own worldly reasons for going to Golspie, without a pang. But since the question of whether economy would allow had been decided in favour of going, there was certainly no more to be said, and, so she told herself, no more to be thought.