"Good gracious, Mr. Heather, don't call women 'queenly.' You're like—what is it?—a 'dime novel.'"
If this comparison were meant to relieve her from the genius' conversation for the rest of dinner, it was admirably conceived. He turned his shoulder on her in undisguised dudgeon.
"And how's the great scheme?" asked somebody of Ruston.
"We hope to get the money," he said, turning for a moment from his hostess. "And if we do that, we're all right."
"Everything's going on very well," called Semingham from the foot of the table. "They've killed a missionary."
"How dreadful!" lisped his wife.
"Regrettable in itself, but the first step towards empire," explained Semingham with a smile.
"It's to stop things of that kind that we are going there," Mr. Belford pronounced; the speech was evidently meant to be repeated, and to rank as authoritative.
"Of course," chuckled Semingham.
If he had been a shopman, he could not have resisted showing his customers how the adulteration was done.