“My—Oh! my aunt. Yes, she’s ripping, isn’t she?”
“The relationship seems so absurd,” the curate said, with his eyes on Bobby’s long legs. “I always confuse it.”
“Yes,” Bobby agreed. “I might as well be a grandfather as she my aunt. There’s not a year’s difference between us.”
He offered his cigarette case to the curate, who declined the invitation to smoke.
“It is such a mistake to drug the brain,” he said.
“It’s so difficult,” Bobby returned cheerfully, “to know whether one has a brain to drug.”
“Oh! I don’t think anyone can have any doubt about that,” the curate returned seriously.
“No,” Bobby agreed. “It is generally the other people who entertain doubts.”
He lighted himself a cigarette and slipped the case into his pocket.
“Prudence smokes—like a furnace,” he added—“whenever she gets the chance.”