"I have been laughing at you all the morning, when I haven't been grumbling," he replied, "at you and the chicken tea, and that little fringed business, to do duty as a napkin, I suppose, and the fly-paper--which isn't the least use, by the way, and I'm sure I could make a better one--and the mosquito net to give additional protection to my beauty when I fall asleep. Who could help laughing at it?"
She looked at him reproachfully. "But it makes you more comfortable, surely?"
"Comfortable," he echoed, "my dear lady! It is a perfect convalescent home!"
But in the silence which followed his right hand clenched itself over a fold in the quilt unmistakably.
"If you will take your chicken tea," she replied cheer-fully, despite a faint tremble in her voice, "you will soon get out of it. And really, Mr. Greyman, you don't seem to have lost any chance. Soma is not very communicative, but everything seems as it was. I never keep back anything from you. But, indeed, the chief thing in the city seems that there is no money to pay the soldiers. Do you know, I'm afraid Soma must loot the shops like the others. He seems to get things for nothing; though of course they are extraordinarily cheap. When I was a mem I used to pay twice as much for eggs."
He interrupted her with a laugh that had a tinge of bitterness in it. "Do you happen to know the story of the Jew who was eating ham during a thunderstorm, Mrs. Erlton?"
She shook her head, smiling, being accustomed by this time to his unsparing, rather reckless ridicule.
"He looked up and said, 'All this fuss about a little bit of pork.' So all this fuss has taught you the price of eggs. Upon my word! it is worse than the convalescent home!" He lay back upon his pillows with a half-irritated weariness.
"I have learned more than that, surely----" she began.
"Learned!" he echoed sharply. "You've learned everything, my dear lady, necessary to salvation. That's the worst of it! Your chatter to Tara--I hear when you think I am asleep. You draw your veil over your face when the water-carrier comes to fill the pots as if you had been born on a housetop. You--Mrs. Erlton! If I were not a helpless idiot I could pass you out of the city to-morrow, I believe. It isn't your fault any longer. It's mine, and Heaven only knows how long. Oh! confound that thrumming and drumming. It gets on my nerves--my nerves!--pshaw!"