“Rather a good one. It was a great nuisance having to come back.”
“Mr Coates was such a nice man,” interpolated Mrs Inglefield, with meaning, referring to John Ames’s locum tenens. “We used to see a great deal of him.”
“Find any nice girls down there, eh, Ames?” said Inglefield, slily, fully alive to the unveiled rudeness of his spouse.
“Oh yes—several.”
“And one in particular, eh?” went on the other, waggishly, drawing a bow at a venture; for John Ames was not one to wear his heart upon his sleeve or to embark in chatter upon the subject nearest and dearest to that organ.
“Nice girls! I didn’t know there were any nowadays,” snapped Mrs Inglefield. “A pack of bicycling, cigarette-smoking, forward tomboys!”
“Oh, come, Mrs Inglefield,” laughed Crosse, “you mustn’t be so down on them. They’re only up to date, you know.”
“Up to date! Then, thank Heaven I’m not up to date; I’m only old-fashioned,” she retorted.
“I’d be sorry to wear the boots of the chip who told you so, Annie,” pronounced Inglefield. “Besides, you’re romping hard over Ames’s feelings; at least, I surmise you are. He’s too close a bird to give the show away. But—as poor old Corney Grain used to say.”
“Oh, I always say what I mean,” she answered, with an air which plainly added: “if people don’t like it so much the worse for the people.” And John Ames was thinking that never again, under any circumstances whatever, would he sit at the table of this abominably ill-bred and offensive woman. He was right. He never would; but for a reason that it was as well he—and all of them seated there—did not so much as dream.