Then she'll go off with somebody else.'
And she did.
_The Horse Dealer's Daughter_
'Well, Mabel, and what are you going to do with yourself?' asked Joe,
with foolish flippancy. He felt quite safe himself. Without listening for
an answer, he turned aside, worked a grain of tobacco to the tip of his
tongue, and spat it out. He did not care about anything, since he felt
safe himself.
The three brothers and the sister sat round the desolate breakfast table,
attempting some sort of desultory consultation. The morning's post had
given the final tap to the family fortunes, and all was over. The dreary
dining-room itself, with its heavy mahogany furniture, looked as if it
were waiting to be done away with.
But the consultation amounted to nothing. There was a strange air of
ineffectuality about the three men, as they sprawled at table, smoking
and reflecting vaguely on their own condition. The girl was alone, a
rather short, sullen-looking young woman of twenty-seven. She did not
share the same life as her brothers. She would have been good-looking,
save for the impassive fixity of her face, 'bull-dog', as her brothers
called it.
There was a confused tramping of horses' feet outside. The three men all
sprawled round in their chairs to watch. Beyond the dark holly-bushes
that separated the strip of lawn from the highroad, they could see a
cavalcade of shire horses swinging out of their own yard, being taken for
exercise.
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