“Well, you’ve taken possession of my particular corner,” she laughed, “and I always get my roses from here.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied as they seated themselves upon the marble bench. “I though you slacked about upstairs until midday.”
She looked at him squarely. “You’ve got a wrong idea about me altogether,” she declared. “It’s true I don’t spend my mornings in smashing up Government property.... By the way, why did you break that wooden stake across your knee?”
He laughed quietly. “It was a parable: it represented a certain province of the Soudan, and its possible fate at England’s hands.”
She thought it out. “I wonder what would have happened,” she mused, “if you’d found that you couldn’t break it. I suppose in that case you would have said it represented England.”
“No,” he answered, “I should have been in a bad fix, and it would have served me right for showing off. But I don’t often attempt what I don’t think I can do. It’s a bad thing to fumble about with anything that’s beyond one, like a dog with an uncrackable bone.”
“Somebody ought to have invented a proverb,” she said, “like ‘Don’t worry what you can’t bite.’ But, you know, you’re fumbling about with me very badly.”
“Would you rather I bit clean through you right away?” he asked. “Supposing I said I thought I had smashed you open already...?”
“I’d pity your strange delusion,” she answered, and they both laughed, though Muriel did not feel hilarious.
“Well, supposing I just said I thought I could do so, and was going to try?”