He seemed quite ignorant about it, too, when she made jokes upon the noise, as they set out for their tramp on the Heath.
"What time about?" he said. "Before lunch?"
"Why, Hugh," she laughed. "You must have heard! It sounded like a motor having its teeth drilled."
"No," he said. "I shouldn't have missed that. It is a sound I've never struck!"
She thought a moment. "Why, I know," she said. "You wouldn't have heard. Of course it was just after two and you were still keeping in touch with the movements."
To her surprise he stopped short, and looking up, she saw his cheeks were flushed below the eyes.
"My dear girl," he said pompously. "I enjoy your humourous way of looking at life, but it's a quite impossible position if a wife's going to be funny at the expense of her husband's ideals."
With which he strode onward and she fell in, a model wife, behind.
But she, of her simplicity, had meant it.
She had always admired his powers of concentration on those dull old literary weeklies. She had not even thought of sleep.