At length—
“I might have known,” she observed, “that you wouldn’t appreciate it. Gratitude is not among your attributes.”
“If you mean,” said Giles, “that I don’t feel impelled to fall down and worship you for taking my name—in vain, you’re perfectly right. I gave you a blinkin’ good chance, and you blinkin’ well took it.”
Katharine drew in her breath.
“Do you imagine,” she demanded, “that the chance you were kind enough to give me was the only chance I had?”
“If,” said her husband, “I imagined anything, I should imagine you considered it the best. If one can only have one strawberry, one doesn’t deliberately take a bad one, does one? Not even out of pity?”
“No,” said Katharine sweetly. “Only by mistake.”
There was a pregnant silence.
Then—
“Sold,” murmured Giles, “the very deuce of a pup—by Mistake, out of Pity. No flowers, by request.”