'Do you like this adventure?' he asked abruptly.
'It's more interesting than anything that ever happened to me,' she said. 'If you were nice I should like it awfully. But as it is——'
'I'm sorry you don't think I'm nice,' said he.
'Well, what do you think?' she said.
Philip reflected. He did not want not to be nice. None of us do. Though you might not think it to see how some of us behave. True politeness, he remembered having been told, consists in showing an interest in other people's affairs.
'Tell me,' he said, very much wishing to be polite and nice. 'Tell me what happened after I—after I—after you didn't come down the ladder with me.'
'Alone and deserted,' Lucy answered promptly, 'my sworn friend having hooked it and left me, I fell down, and both my hands were full of gravel, and the fierce soldiery surrounded me.'
'I thought you were coming just behind me,' said Philip, frowning.
'Well, I wasn't.'
'And then.'