"Oh, come, Priscilla; you mustn't begin on Mr. Brockway like that. I fancy he has had scant time to dabble in your little intellectual fads."
Gertrude looked up quickly, and the keen sense of justice began to assert itself. Having escaped the pillory in his character of artisan, the passenger agent was to be held up to ridicule in his proper person. Not if she could help it, Gertrude promised herself; and she turned suddenly upon the collegian.
"What do you think of Tourguénief, Cousin Chester?" she asked, amiably.
"A good bit less than nothing," answered the athlete, with his eyes in his plate. "What is there about him that we ought to know and don't?"
"Tell us, Priscilla," said Gertrude, passing the query along.
But the elder Miss Beaswicke refused to enlighten anyone. "Go and get his book and read it, as I did," she said.
"I sha'n't for one," Fleetwell declared. "I can't read the original, and I won't read a translation."
"Have you read him in the original, Priscilla?" Gertrude inquired, determined to push the subject so far afield that it could never get back.
"Oh, hush!" said the elder Miss Beaswicke. "What is the matter with you two. I refuse positively to be quarrelled with."
That ended the Russian divagation, and it had the effect of making the table-talk impersonal. This was precisely what Mr. Vennor desired. What he meant to do was to set a conversational pace which would show Gertrude that Brockway was hopelessly out of his element in her own social sphere.