“That’s very good of you,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle, trying to be sarcastic.
“The only figure on Olympus whom I have always regarded as being purely mythical,” Mr. Cardan went on, “as having no foundation in the facts of life, is Athena. A goddess of wisdom—a goddess!” he repeated with emphasis. “Isn’t that a little too thick?”
Majestically Mrs. Aldwinkle rose from the table. “Let us go out into the garden,” she said.
CHAPTER IV
Mrs. Aldwinkle had even bought the stars.
“How bright they are!” she exclaimed, as she stepped out at the head of her little troop of guests on to the terrace. “And how they twinkle! How they palpitate! As though they were alive. They’re never like this in England, are they, Calamy?”
Calamy agreed. Agreeing, he had found, was a labour-saving device—positively a necessity in this Ideal Home. He always tried to agree with Mrs. Aldwinkle.
“And how clearly one sees the Great Bear!” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on, speaking almost perpendicularly upwards into the height of heaven. The Bear and Orion were the only constellations she could recognise. “Such a strange and beautiful shape, isn’t it?” It might almost have been designed by the architect of the Malaspina palace.
“Very strange,” said Calamy.