"You have hit him off completely," said Tom. "Happy and amiable is just what Toby is."
Mrs. Murchison's mind went off for a moment on a maternal excursion at the sight of Lily and Toby, who were talking eagerly together, but came quickly back again.
"And the vivacity at present depicted in his face is considerable," went on Mrs. Murchison in a burst of analytic intuition. "I just adore vivacity. Vivacity without screaming, Lord Abbotsworthy, is what I just adore. Mr. Murchison is very vivacious; but to hear him when he is being vivacious, why,—you'd think he had the chicken-pox—I should say whooping-cough."
"That must be very alarming until you are used to it," said Tom.
"It is that. And the choking fit which sometimes ensues on his hilarity—why, I have seen times and again his life hung by a hair, like the sword of Demosthenes at Belshazzar's feast."
Mrs. Murchison delivered herself of this surprising allusion with the most touching confidence. She liked a well-turned sentence, and repeated it softly to herself.
"Such anxieties are inseparable from the union of the married life," said Tom in a voice that trembled slightly.
Kit from the other side of the table had just burst out into a loud meaningless laugh, and he suspected that she had overheard.
"That's what I say," answered Mrs. Murchison; "and that's what the Prayer-Book says. The joys and the sorrows; the opportunities and the importunities."
This was slightly cryptic, but it was probable that importunity was to be taken as the opposite of opportunity. Tom chanced it, though he did not seem to remember anything in the Prayer-book which suggested the widest parallel to Mrs. Murchison's quotation. She went ahead in such a surprising manner in conversation that it was really difficult to keep up. She positively scoured the plains of thought.