"Will you go without me?" says Barbara, when she has gone, looking at her husband with large, earnest eyes.
"Never. You say you know me thoroughly, Barbara; why then ask that question?"
"Well, you will never go then," says she, "for I—I will never enter those people's doors. I couldn't, Freddy. It would kill me!" She has kept up her defiant attitude so successfully and for so long that Mr. Monkton is now electrified when she suddenly bursts into tears and throws herself into his arms.
"You think me a beast!" says she, clinging to him.
"You are tired; you are bothered. Give it up, darling," says he, patting her on the back, the most approved modern plan of reducing people to a stale of common sense.
"But you do think it, don't you?"
"No. Barbara. There now, be a good sensible girl, and try to realize that I don't want you to accept this invitation, and that I am going to write to my mother in the morning to say it is impossible for us to leave home just now—as—as—eh?"
"Oh, anything will do."
"As baby is not very well? That's the usual polite thing, eh?"
"Oh! no, don't say that," says Mrs. Monkton in a little, frightened tone. "It—it's unlucky! It might—I'm not a bit superstitious, Freddy, but it might affect baby in some way—do him some harm."