"You don't," Jenny persisted.
"My dear child, I know girls too well. I know their wretched stammering temperaments, their inability to face facts, their lust for sentiment, their fondness for going half-way and turning back."
"I wish you wouldn't keep on walking up and down. It makes me want to giggle. And when I laugh, you get angry."
"Laugh! It is a laughing matter to you. To me it's something so serious, so sacred, that laughter no longer exists."
Jenny thought for a moment.
"I believe," she began, "I should laugh whatever happened. I don't believe anything would stop my laughing."
Just then, away downstairs, the double knock of a telegraph boy was heard, too far away to shake the nerves of Jenny and Maurice, but still sufficiently a reminder of another life outside their own to interrupt the argument.
"I wonder if that's for me," said Maurice.
"You'd better go down and see, if you think it is."
"Wait a minute. Old Mother Wadman may answer the door."