Aureole looked up sharply: “You could have told me to move, couldn’t you?”
“You looked very comfortable, my dear.”
A hot spurt of anger flushed Aureole’s creaminess. “If Peter had been in the way of a jibe,” she said in a carefully controlled voice, “Mr. Heron would have—sworn at her. He has sworn at her twice to-day.”
“Heron’s not a gentleman,” decreed his friend, with unusual promptness of speech.
“Perhaps not, but he’s at least a man.”
Stuart looked embarrassed. And Oliver became dimly aware that his wife was really enraged with him.
“Diddums, spitfire?” tentatively.
She burst forth: “You can’t treat me in the spirit of equality, of give-and-take. No! I’m a petted little soft thing, who mustn’t be inconvenienced or she’ll cry; so you’re chivalrous, and sail on the wrong jibe, and—and think yourself a fine fellow. You don’t understand, do you, that there’s nothing, no, nothing on earth I want so much as to be properly sworn at!”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized for not having sufficiently damned her. As a result of a moment’s consideration, he remarked placidly: “Blast you, Aureole, pass the mustard,” with an air of having thus fulfilled all that was required of him.