"I know," says Mona, brightening, and putting on an air so different from her own usual unaffected one as to strike her listener with awe. "I shall say, 'Oh! thanks, quite too awfully much, don't you know? but Geoffrey and I didn't find it a bit long, and we were as warm as wool all the time.'"
At this appalling speech Geoffrey's calculations fall through, and he gives himself up to undisguised mirth.
"If you say all that," he says, "there will be wigs on the green: that's Irish, isn't it? or something like it, and very well applied too. The first part of your speech sounded like Toole or Brough, I'm not sure which."
"Well, it was in a theatre I heard it," confesses Mona, meekly: "it was a great lord who said it on the stage, so I thought it would be all right."
"Great lords are not necessarily faultlessly correct, either on or off the stage," says Geoffrey. "But, just for choice, I prefer them off it. No, that will not do at all. When my mother addresses you, you are to answer her back again in tones even colder than her own, and say——"
"But, Geoffrey, why should I be cold to your mother? Sure you wouldn't have me be uncivil to her, of all people?"
"Not uncivil, but cool. You will say to her, 'It was rather better than I anticipated, thank you.' And then, if you can manage to look bored, it will be quite correct, so far, and you may tell yourself you have scored one."
"I may say that horrid speech, but I certainly can't pretend I was bored during our drive, because I am not," says Mona.
"I know that. If I was not utterly sure of it I should instantly commit suicide by precipitating myself under the carriage-wheels," says Geoffrey. "Still—'let us dissemble.' Now say what I told you."
So Mrs. Rodney says, "It was rather better than I anticipated, thank you," in a tone so icy that his is warm beside it.