"Did you mean to do the same thing as I did?"
"Something like. I've been over that room with a small-toothed comb myself more than once, and plenty more of the house likewise; but it was only tonight I got your inspiration about the desk, and I was meaning to try your very own experiment on it."
"But I thought you said you didn't see anything inside the room?"
"Did I really?"
She looked at him with something like a grimace.
"Are you still being difficult?"
"Oh, no… But let's revert for a moment to the absorbing subject of supralapsarianists. Do you really believe they wear barbed-wire underwear and take off their socks when they pass an infralapsarianist in the street?"
She pouted.
"If you don't mean to talk turkey," she said, "you don't have to give me applesauce. I'm not a fish."
"O.K., baby. But how much of that cache did you get through before Cullis butted in?"