"We are advancing towards America," he replied, after a moment's thought. "That is where our fiction goes, and that is whence our inventions come."
Mrs. Murchison dropped a large truffle off her fork, and remained a moment with it poised.
"I guess that's deep," she said. "I shall cable that to Mr. Murchison."
Tom wondered silently whether Mr. Murchison would be as much puzzled by it as he was himself; but his wife proceeded to elucidate.
"The fictions are the inventions, you mean," she said. "The one goes to where the other comes from. The oneness of the two countries, in fact. The brightest thing I've heard this summer," she observed.
Tom was lost in contemplation at the thought of the deep gloom in which all else that Mrs. Murchison had heard this summer must be involved, and he was grateful when that lady, after a reflective pause on his dazzling remark, changed the subject.
"What a lovely man Lord Evelyn is!" she said.
"Lord Evelyn? Oh, Toby! Yes, he's an excellent fellow."
"By lovely, I do not refer to his personal appearance," said Mrs. Murchison, "for that is homely. But by lovely I refer to his happy and amiable disposition."