Sally shook her head.
"You interrupted me in the midst of my thesis."
Bobby interrupted again.
"It is our only chance to get in a word. We have to insert its thin edge at a comma, or else keep still. You never have any conversational semicolons, to say nothing of periods."
"As I was saying," Sally repeated pertinaciously; "my world is overcrowded. I have so many acquaintances that I never get time to enjoy my friends."
"What about now?" Bobby queried. "Here are we, and here is time. Which is lacking: enjoyment, or friendship?"
"Oh, this is an interlude, and doesn't count. We shall just get into the midst of a little rational conversation, though, and two or three stupid people will come in and reduce us to talking about the weather."
"You might send out cards," Arlt suggested, with the hesitating accent which was so characteristic of him. "Why not announce that on Tuesdays you are at home to clever people and friends only?"
"Yes; but it is no subject for joking," Sally persisted. "Last Tuesday in all that storm, for the first time this winter, Mr. Thayer came to see me. I know how busy he is, and I was just preparing to make the most of his call, when Mrs. Stanley came swishing and creaking into the room, and she babbled about her servants and her lumbago until Mr. Thayer took his departure. I wanted to administer poison."
"Try an anodyne," Bobby advised her. "They say that stout people yield easily to their influence. By the way, why is it polite to call a woman stout, but rude in the extreme to dub her fat? That is one of the problems I have never been able to solve. I used the wrong word in regard to Mrs. Stanley, one night, and she overheard me. Since then, she hauls in her latch-string hand over hand, whenever I turn the corner."