“Oh, we don’t—at least, I don’t—make any claim to be beyond feeling cold or heat when there is no reason for not feeling it.”
“I beg your pardon.”
Cochrane still looked amused and quite patient.
“Well, if for any cause it was necessary that I, in healing you, should have to stand in a tub of ice-cold water, I don’t imagine it would affect me much. There would be a reason for my doing it. But in the ordinary way we say, ‘This is cold, this is hot.’ They don’t hurt. My time is taken up in denying things that do hurt.”
“False belief hurts, and its consequences.”
Maud joined in. Thurso was being tiresome and irritable.
“Dear Thurso, pass the marmalade, please. I have a false claim of wanting some, so don’t tell me there isn’t any. I propose to indulge my false claim. Oh, don’t be severe with us; it is such a pity, and spoils my pleasure.”
“I was merely inquiring into these matters,” said Thurso rather acidly, for his mind still chafed at the trick, or so he called it, that had made him go to sleep last night.
Maud’s false claim of wanting marmalade was soon satisfied, and she got up.