"Nonsense," indignantly. She is fairly roused now, and Mr. Browne regarding her with a proud eye, tells himself he is about to have his reward at last. "You know very well that the term 'fleshpots' referred to what was in the pots, not to the pots themselves."
"That's all you know about it. That's where your fatal ignorance comes in, my poor Joyce," says he, with immense compassion. "Search your Bible from cover to cover, and I defy you to find a single mention of the contents of those valuable bits of bric-à-brac. Of fleshpots—heavy emphasis on the pots—and ten fingers down at once if you please—we read continually as being hankered after by the Israelites, who then, as now, were evidently avid collectors."
"You've been having champagne, Dicky," says Miss Kavanagh, regarding him with a judicial eye.
"So have you. But I can't see what that excellent beverage has got to do with the ancient Jews. Keep to the point. Did you ever hear that they expressed a longing for the flesh of Egypt? No. So far so good. The pots themselves were the objects of their admiration. During that remarkable run of theirs through the howling wilderness they, one and all, to a man, betrayed the true æsthetic tendency. They raved incessantly for the girl—I beg pardon—the land they had left behind them. The land that contained those priceless jars."
"I wonder how you can be so silly," says Miss Kavanagh disdainfully. Will he never go away! If he stays, and if—the other—comes——
"Silly! my good child. How silly! Why everything goes to prove the probability of my statement. The taste for articles of vertu—for antiquities—for fossils of all descriptions that characterized them then, has lived to the present day. Then they worried after old china, and who shall deny that now they have an overwhelming affection for old clo'."
"Well; your folly doesn't concern me," says Miss Kavanagh, gathering up her skirts with an evident intention of shaking off the dust of his presence from her feet and quitting him.
"I am sorry that you should consider it folly," says Mr. Browne sorrowfully. "I should not have said so much about it perhaps but that I wanted to prove to you that in calling you a fleshpot I only meant to——"
"I won't be called that," interrupts Miss Kavanagh angrily. "It's horrid! It makes me feel quite fat! Now, once for all, Dicky, I forbid it. I won't have it."
"I don't see how you are to get out of it," says Mr. Browne, shaking his head and hands in wild deprecation. "Fleshpots were desirable articles—you're another—ergo—you're a fleshpot. See the argument?"