"Do you know, I have heard since that to give any one a knife cuts friendship, and brings bad luck and separation, and numbers of dreadful things. So you and I are now declared enemies, I suppose. Shall we go and throw the little ill-omen in the lake after lunch?"
"No; I will not part with my knife; I find it very useful," I said, in a bête way.
"Antony," called out Lord Tilchester, "you have arrived in the nick of time to save Babykins from turning into a hospital nurse. She thinks the costume becoming, and threatens to leave us for the wounded heroes. Cannot you restrain her?"
"How?" asked Sir Antony, helping himself to some chicken curry.
"Really excellent curry your chef makes, Tilchester."
"Don't tell him about it, Reggie," lisped Mrs. Parton-Mills. "The unfeeling creature is only thinking of his food."
"You seem to have all the qualities for an ideal convalescent nurse," said Sir Antony, with an air of detaching himself with difficulty from the contemplation of the curry.
"And those qualities are—?" asked Lord Tilchester.
"Principally stimulating," and he selected a special chutney from the various kinds a footman was handing.
"What do you mean?" demanded Babykins, pouting.
"Exactly what you do," and he looked at her, smiling in a way I should have said was insolent had it been I who was concerned.