"I know that. The papers are full of it, and it's all a confounded damnable business, Tom, and that's all about it."
"Unfortunately it's not 'all about it,'" rejoined Sir Thomas dryly.
"That's what Louisa says. Women are so queer about things of that sort, and the papers are full of twaddle. She is anxious about Luke."
"But it's all nonsense, isn't it?"
"What is?"
Colonel Harris did not reply immediately; for one thing, he did not know exactly how to put his own fears and anxieties into words. They were so horrible and so farfetched that to tell them plainly and baldly to his brother-in-law, to this man with whom he was soberly smoking a cigar in a sober-looking office, whilst hansoms and taxicabs were rattling past in the street below within sight and hearing, seemed little short of idiocy. He was not a man of deep penetration—was Colonel Harris—no great reader of thoughts or of character. He tried to look keenly at Sir Thomas's shrewd face, but all he was conscious of was a net-work of wrinkles round a pair of eyes which seemed to be twinkling with humour.
Humour at this moment? Great Heavens above!
"I wish," he blurted out somewhat crossly at last, "you'd help me out a bit, Tom. Hang it all, man, all this officialism makes me dumb."
"Don't," said Sir Thomas blandly, "let it do that, Will," and the speaker's eyes seemed to twinkle even more merrily than before.