“Very well—your conscience is kept in the kitchen; when I go to order dinner I look at it—I order more if we are likely to run short. So give me the cheque, please, there is a bill for conscience owing, and we must have a fresh supply.”
“I don’t understand one word,” said Evelyn, rubbing the sand off his legs preparatory to turning his trousers down again. “Not one word. Does it matter?”
Madge’s face grew quite grave again; smiles had spurted as with explosions from eyes and mouth when she saw his sand-sketch of her, but these had ceased.
“Yes, it does matter,” she said, “for unless you propose that we should remain at Le Touquet quite indefinitely, it will be necessary some day to become definite. I suggest that we should become definite now. Everything,” and she dug impatiently in the sand with scooping fingers—“everything has been left at a tag-end. We can’t forever leave things frayed like that——”
Evelyn interrupted her.
“Oh, I know so well!” he exclaimed; “the metal thing comes off the end of a lace, and you have to push it through the holes; a little piece only comes through, and what does not come through gets thicker and won’t follow. Then one has to take it out and begin again.”
“Yes, it is exactly that,” she said. “That has happened to us. When that happens, what do you do?”
“I take off the boot in question,” said Evelyn gravely, “and ring the bell. When answered, I tell them to take away the boot and put in another lace. That is done: then I put the boot on. But I don’t wrestle with laces which have not tags. You are wrestling, you know.”
For the second time this morning a feeling as if she was dealing with a child seized Madge. The child was a very highly-developed man, too. This was a handicap to her; a heavier handicap was that she loved him. Even now, as he sat most undignifiedly wiping the sand from his feet, preparatory to getting his socks on again, she felt this immensely.