“No,” she said. “He made himself particularly agreeable, too agreeable; at least he tried to.”
Then she laughed again and this time the laughing did her good. She became calmer and sat down on the edge of an iron water tank which stood in the corner of the greenhouse. I warned her of the danger of falling in backward. I also offered her one of my cushions to put on the edge of the tank, which looked to me hard. She laughed in reply. My cigarette case was, very fortunately, in my pocket. I fished it out and asked her if she would like to smoke. She took a cigarette and lit it. I could see that it helped to calm her still further.
“Go on with your story,” I said.
“Where was I?”
She spoke quite naturally. The laughter and the cigarette, between them, had saved her from the attack which for some time was threatening.
“You hadn’t actually begun,” I said. “You had only mentioned that the Archdeacon was, or tried to be, unusually, even excessively, agreeable.”
“He was writing letters in his study,” said Lalage, “when I knocked at the door and walked in on him. I apologized at once for interrupting him.”
“You were quite right to do that.”
“He said he didn’t mind a bit; in fact, liked it. Then he looked like a sheep. You know the sort of way a sheep looks?”
“Woolly?”