Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

7. CHAPTER VII: MISS AMEDROZ GOES TO PERIVALE (continued)

'It isn't that not that at all. It would not be foolish, not in your sense of the word, but it would be wrong. My aunt has been kind to me, and therefore I am bound to her for this service. But she is kind to you also, and yet you are not bound. That's why I complain. You sail always under false pretences, and yet you think you do your duty. You have to see your lawyer which means going to your club; or to attend to your tenants which means hunting and shooting.'

'I haven't got any tenants.'

'You know very well that you could remain over Sunday without doing any harm to anybody only you don't like going to church three times, and you don't like hearing my aunt read a sermon afterwards. Why shouldn't you stay, and I go to the club?'

'With all my heart, if you can manage it.'

'But I can't; we ain't allowed to have clubs, or shooting, or to have our own way in anything, putting forward little pretences about lawyers.'

'Come, I'll stay if you'll ask me.'

'I'm sure I won't do that. In the first place you'd go to sleep, and then she would be offended; and I don't know that your sufferings would make mine any lighter. I'm not prepared to alter the ways of the world, but feel myself entitled to grumble at them sometimes.'