"The heat perhaps," lisped the Incandescent Gerald.
"And other things," added Agatha, in her quiet, eloquent way.
Her brother Stephen stared perplexedly at her for some seconds, and then looked round the party with an air of utter bewilderment.
"Ah, these young people will do too much!" Sir Joseph remarked solemnly. Then turning to his hostess he added: "It was the same at the time of the bicycle craze in the early nineties,—but you would scarcely remember that, my dear lady!"
"What!" ejaculated Miss Mallowcoid. "Edith not remember the bicycle craze of the nineties! My dear Sir Joseph, what absurd rubbish!"
Miss Mallowcoid was beginning to make her sister feel what the doctors call "febrile."
"You so frequently jump at wrong conclusions in your efforts to set the world right, my dear Bella," she said with bitter precision. "Surely one's life may be so full of other preoccupations that one can forget even the most startling events."
"Oh, I see what you mean," said Miss Mallowcoid, speaking with her mouth full of very dry short-bread, "I didn't know he meant it in that way."
Sir Joseph was about to exclaim that he did not, as a matter of fact, mean it "in that way"; but realising the hyperbolic quality of his intended compliment, he preferred to appear eager to swallow the end of a chocolate éclair rather than attempt to explain.
At this point Denis was observed to try and snatch back a piece of cake that Leonetta had, in keeping with her customary tactics, previously taken from his plate. In doing so, however, he struck the top of the milk jug with his elbow, and the vessel toppled over and emptied itself upon his own and Leonetta's clothes.