“What a sharp devil you are! Exactly. And one doesn’t blame Tawd really for what followed regarding Verbeena. That is to say, he turned down about fifty female advisers and decided to bring Verbeena up as a Johnny instead of a Mildred. Can you conceive?”
“Not easily.”
“It was less trouble—it wouldn’t, you know, take up so much of his time. He needed all that for training up on bridge and American poker in order to conserve the old patrimony thing.”
“Brought her up just as a boy?”
“Like a bally nipper! Quite. Ridin’, wrestlin’, boxin’, boatin’, fightin’—wherever she might be duly confident of victory—jumpin’, runnin’, skatin’, skeein’, golfin’, gamblin’—er——”
“No sex at all?”
“Had she any the little dear must have wrestled with it long ago and lost.”
“Ah,” said the American, “that would account for her sang Freud.”
“O, indeed, I assure you, cold as a fish.”