“Well what?”
“Well, really, I think I must have fallen into the absurdity of laughing at nothing.”
“You can’t,” flashed Sunbeam with some heat.
“I can account for my amusement in no other way,” I returned.
“If you won’t tell me,” she cried with more warmth than before, “I won’t kiss you again for a week, and that will be just as disagreeable for you as for me.”
Then she jumped up and came to me coaxingly.
“Come along, Genius,” she urged, “just do tell me what you were laughing at. You wouldn’t laugh at nothing. Nobody ever does.”
“Well,” I began, heroically casting about for an explanation, “you see you said he was the best bed-maker as proudly as if you had said he was the best general, or the best cricketer, or the finest sportsman, or—or—the truth is, Sunbeam, you were thinking of one thing and I was thinking of another.”
“Is that why you laughed?”
“I am afraid there was no other reason.”