"Well," she inquired severely, as he removed his napkin from its ring decorated with an enameled design of the Clan McIntosh plaid, "did you get anything?"
Delicately detaching a fish-ball from its comrades, he made as if he didn't fully understand.
"Get—anything?" he repeated vaguely. "Oh, you mean passage? No—that is, I didn't take your suggestion seriously. Did you really mean that you wanted to run away?"
Mrs. Tassifer fixed him with a pair of fiery, if watery, gray eyes, and her lips drew down into a thin line.
"Bentham," she almost hissed, "don't trifle with me! You know you are just as anxious to get away from this God-forsaken country as I am—as everybody is! Do you suppose I am going to wait here calmly for a planet to fall on my head?"
Mr. Tassifer was frightened, but he preserved his outward placidity and sampled a piece of fish-ball.
"I don't believe a word of it," he answered, avoiding her glance. "Who ever heard of such a thing? Asteroid-rot!"
"Nobody else thinks it's rot, as you call it!" she snapped. "Rhoda certainly knows about such things, and she says it's absolutely sure."
"Rhoda!" snorted Bentham. His wife's niece was a constant thorn in the side of his pride. He resented her cleverness, conscious that, if women got the vote, he could never manage to keep his job—some college girl would get it probably.
"Well, she's a real professor, isn't she?" demanded Mrs. Tassifer, who admired her brother's daughter in spite of her intellectual superiority.