“Do? What could I do? We sat in opposite corners as far as we could get from each other, exchanging occasional glances of mutual detestation for about an hour and a half. He knocked me down and walked on me once, and took his hat off very politely and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a word. He didn’t even say he thought I was the door-mat. And then some cabbages of his fell off the seat.”
“Sure they weren’t thistles?”
“Vegetables of some sort. And I said: ‘You’ve dropped your——whatever they were.’ And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I’m-sure-I-don’t-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave that bread alone.”
Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and sparrows.
“Well?” she said.
“Well?” said Nina.
“Why ever didn’t you ask him to put the window up, or down, or something? I would have—just to hear if he has a voice.”
“It wouldn’t have been any good. He’d just have bowed again, and I’d had enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our tongues out, and why on earth shouldn’t we talk?”
“You never did!”
“Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said——”