He also made use of that excellent phrase, for which he was beholden to Mrs. Tregaskis, in conversation with his mother that evening.
It was more than wasted upon her.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘the only way,’” she returned with a sudden irritating assumption of common sense, her lack of which she habitually dwelt upon with pensive complacency.
“If you want to go yachting, Morris, well and good; but don’t talk in an affected melodramatic style, as though you were making some great sacrifice in going, please. It doesn’t ring true, and you know how I hate little insincerities.”
Nina’s assault was perhaps not utterly unprovoked. A certain jutting forward of her son’s jaw, a tendency to monosyllabic replies preceded by the slight start of one roused from a profound reverie, had conveyed to Nina all too accurately that Morris was enacting, in his own opinion, the rôle of jeune premier in a drama of self-sacrifice.
“I’ve already told you that you can start on this yachting trip whenever you please, so why talk as though it were some tremendous decision which you had just come to?” she demanded irritably.
Morris smiled with a superior expression.
“You don’t understand, mother,” he told her, with a touch of compassion.
Few remarks were more calculated to rouse her annoyance.