"And Sabre," said Lord Tybar, "what the devil does it matter what a bloated robber minds, anyway? That's the way to look at me, Sabre. Trample me underfoot, my boy. I'm a pestilent survivor of the feudal system, aren't I, Nona?"
"Absolutely. So, Marko, don't be a completer noodle than you already are."
"Ah, you're getting it now." Lord Tybar murmured. "I'm a noodle, too, the Searchlight says."
He somehow gave Sabre the impression of taking an even deeper enjoyment in the incident between his wife and Sabre than the enjoyment he clearly had in his own facetiousness. He was slightly turned in his saddle so as to look directly at Nona, and he listened and interposed, and turned his eyes from her face to Sabre's, and from Sabre's back to hers, with his handsome head slightly cocked to one side and with much gleaming in his eyes; rather as if he had on some private mock.
Fantastical notion! What mock could he have?
"Well, about my word 'elegant'," Nona was going on, "and why it is mine—weren't you asking?"
Sabre said he had. "Yes, why yours?"
"Why, you see, Derry and Toms is a case of it." She tickled her horse's ears with her riding switch, and he stamped a hoof on the ground and arched his neck as though he knew he was a case of it and was proud of being a case of it. "I wanted an elegant name for him and I always think two names are so elegant for a firm—"
"Bloodsucker and Noodle are mine," said Lord Tybar in a very gloomy voice; and they laughed.
"—So I called him Derry and Toms."