Wonderfully clever, I dare say, but my own experience was dead against it.

"In the time of the late Mrs.
Betteredge," I said, "I felt pretty often inclined to try your philosophy, Mr.Franklin.But the law insists on your smoking your cigar, sir, when you have once chosen it." I pointed that observation with a wink.

Mr.Franklin burst out laughing--and we were as merry as crickets, until the next new side of his character turned up in due course.

So things went on with my young master and me; and so (while the Sergeant and the gardener were wrangling over the roses) we two spent the interval before the news came back from Frizinghall.
The pony-chaise returned a good half hour before I had ventured to expect it.

My lady had decided to remain for the present, at her sister's house.