“ ‘Naturally,’ ” she said, taking up the word sharply, “it was like that all round the course, wasn’t it?”
“What of it? I understood you to charge me with being fooled by poor little Julietta——”
“Stop calling her ‘little’,” Mrs. Simms commanded. “She’s a foot taller than you are!”
“Well, then,” he mildly remonstrated, “with all that advantage, what would she take the trouble to fool me for? If she wanted to make love to me she could do it openly, by force.”
At this, his wife’s face showed sheer despair of him. “I just said that she doesn’t take the slightest interest in you—except as a foil! This is the third time.”
“The third time what?”
“The third time you’ve been manœuvred into coming out here to play with them. Good heavens, don’t you see it?”
“No,” he returned, meekly. “Tell me in words of one syllable, Anne.”
Mrs. Simms complied, and in her response there was that direct brevity not unusual with her sex in the climaxes of bitter moments. “She’s trying to get my sister’s husband away from her!”
The bewilderment of Mr. Simms was complete. “Old John?” he cried. “Old John Tower? Poor little Julietta Voss is trying to get old John away from Mildred? Of all the preposterous——” His laughter interrupted his enunciation. “Why, that’s the most far-fetched fancy work I ever—— But of course you don’t mean it seriously.”