meant! This was too stupid!

"Why, I told you straight off Mrs. Hatfield's husband is dying," Johnson
exclaimed, contemptuously. "She wrote one of her mauve billy doos this
morning, telling the master so, and suggesting they'd soon be able to be
married and happy--pretty cold-blooded, I call it, considering the poor
man is not yet in his grave!"

Armstrong was almost knocked over by this statement; then he
laughed--and what he said meant in plain English that Mr. Johnson need
not worry himself, for no Arranstoun had ever been known to be coerced
into any course of conduct which he did not desire himself--not being
hampered by consideration for women, or by any consideration but his own
will. For the matter of that, a headstrong, ruthless race all of them
and, as Mr. Johnson must be very well aware, their own particular master
was a true chip of the old block.

"See his bonny blue eye--" (I think he pronounced it "ee"), "see his
mouth shut like a game spring. See his strong arms and his height! See
him smash the boughs off trees when they get in his way! and then tell
me a woman's going to get dominion over him. Go along, Mr. Johnson!"

But Johnson remained unconvinced and troubled; he had had several
unpleasant proofs of woman's infernal cunning in his own sphere of life,
and Mrs. Hatfield, he knew, was as well endowed with Eve's wit as any
French maid.

"We'll ha' a bet about it if you like," Armstrong remarked, as he got up
to go, the clock striking three. He knew the first batch of afternoon
tourists would be clamoring at the gate.