She wanted to know everything,
even the kind of cake which the old lady supplied on these occasions;
and their summer excursions to churches in the neighborhood of London
for the purpose of taking rubbings of the brasses became most
important festivals, from the interest she took in them. In six months
she knew more about his odd friends and hobbies than his own brothers
and sisters knew, after living with him all his life; and Ralph found
this very pleasant, though disordering, for his own view of himself
had always been profoundly serious.
Certainly it was very pleasant to be with Mary Datchet and to become,
directly the door was shut, quite a different sort of person,
eccentric and lovable, with scarcely any likeness to the self most
people knew. He became less serious, and rather less dictatorial at
home, for he was apt to hear Mary laughing at him, and telling him, as
she was fond of doing, that he knew nothing at all about anything. She
made him, also, take an interest in public questions, for which she
had a natural liking; and was in process of turning him from Tory to
Radical, after a course of public meetings, which began by boring him
acutely, and ended by exciting him even more than they excited her.
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