"Curious! After hunting hours and hours—"
"'Curious—after—hunting—hours—and hours,'" he intoned. She could hear him getting ready to laugh. "The moment I caught sight of the little imp, I forgot I was tired. Whatever she's been up to, it's something interesting. May I wait and hear her tell about it?"
"Of course you may! I should think you'd earned admittance." Miss Theodosia was sizzling gently with perfectly natural irritation. Now that her baby was safe, she had leisure to be irritated.
"Come and rest in the easiest chair you can find. When I think—"
"Don't think! Let's just have cups of tea and wait for the show to begin."
"But why aren't you cross? I am."
The man-voice in the dark was soothing.
"Oh, no, you only think you are, dear lady. You are deceiving yourself.
Crossness and—er—nerve-itis are two very different diseases (you note
I term them both diseases). I speak as One Who Did Once Know."
Miss Theodosia, on her way for cups of tea, paused in her dim doorway.
"Diseases change so. In ten years—"