Silvia burst out laughing.
“Then Aunt Joanna has bought the cartoons themselves,” she said. “But don’t suggest that to mother. Or rather, if you want me to talk about it all to her, I won’t. Aunt Joanna, you see, wants to, what they call wipe mother’s eye. I’m quite certain of it. And if mother got wind of it, she wouldn’t part with that wretched picture for a million.”
“But how odd——”
“Yes; that’s her oddness. I said we had got odd parents. And I doubt—at least, there’s no doubt about it at all—whether she will let your father have back the one cartoon that she has got for what she paid for it. She doesn’t want any money, and she’s as generous as she can be, bless her, but she won’t be ‘done.’ The picture is hers, and she won’t let him have it back at a penny less than he is going to receive for it. Oh, let’s talk about something more interesting. Anyhow, you and I don’t want the cartoon we’ve got, or any more like it. But people are so queer, and I love their queernesses: they are part of them. After all, the queernesses in people are exactly what makes their individuality. You’re queer, I’m queer.”
“Why am I queer?” demanded Peter.
“I’ve told you so often,” said she.
Peter guessed at that what his imputed queerness was. It was true that she had told him often, but it was true also that there was a thing which a lover was never tired of repeating.
“Never: never once,” said he.
“As if I wasn’t doing it all day,” she said. “Taking advantage, I mean, of your queerness—not merely telling you about it directly, but being so much more direct than just telling you. What’s your queerness, indeed, if it isn’t that you allow me to be queer, just because you are?”
“You’ve changed the subject,” said he. “You’re talking about your queerness now.”