"Why won't you?" he answered, caressively.
The blood was beating up like fire in his veins. Mrs. Radford sat down again, large and impressive and aloof. He left Clara altogether to attend to the mother.
"They say Sarah Bernhardt's fifty," he said.
"Fifty! She's turned sixty!" came the scornful answer.
"Well," he said, "you'd never think it! She made me want to howl even now."
"I should like to see myself howling at that bad old baggage!" said Mrs. Radford. "It's time she began to think herself a grandmother, not a shrieking catamaran——"
He laughed.
"A catamaran is a boat the Malays use," he said.
"And it's a word as I use," she retorted.
"My mother does sometimes, and it's no good my telling her," he said.