Then he said, "Hah!" in a pleased, surprised tone, and rubbed his hands together as though he were waiting for the gods to throw him another.
"Hullo!" observed Patricia, opening her eyes wide. "I say, that's a nice opening speech from a bishop's son! Your father told me a lot about you. He said you were a good young man."
"It's a contemptible lie!" he said, stung to the depths. "Look here! I don't want you to go believing any such—"
"Oh, I don't believe it," she said composedly. "H'm. What made you think of it? That limerick, I mean?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I think it was you. That is, it was a sort of inspiration — the kind that's supposed to soak you on your first sight of Tintern Abbey, or something of the sort. Then you rush home, and wake up your wife, and write it down."
She stared. "Ooh, you villain! You mean to tell me that looking at me makes you think of a limerick? I don't think that's nice."
"Eh? Why?"
"H’m. Well" she admitted, lifting an eyebrow meditatively, "maybe we weren't thinking of the same limerick… Why do you wake up your wife?"
"What wife?" said Hugh, who had lost the thread of the discourse.
She brooded, her full pink lips pressed together. Again she looked at him over her shoulder, with an air of a suspicion confirmed.