“Just,” was the answer.
“And good at games?”
“There was never such a one for make-believe.”
“A happy disposition. But then, as to happiness—Kit isn’t married, of course.”
Her ladyship, in an uncontrollable spasm, whisked about.
“Kit, Mrs. Davis, has never suffered that most cruel of disillusionments.”
And then they went at it alternately, each pointedly addressing not the other, and tossing the hypothetical Kit between them, as if that epicene individual were the most familiar of shuttlecocks.
“Kit is to be congratulated, Mrs. Davis,” said his lordship.
“Kit has chosen the better course, Mrs. Davis,” said her ladyship.
“Matrimony is the shadow of felicity, Mrs. Davis, for which men, like the dog in the fable, drop the substance.”