“I’ll see to it, dear,” replied his wife, without looking up from the bread she was cutting. “Pity it has been forgotten.”
“Forgotten! And you, who never forget anything!”
Then, turning to Kingcote, he declaimed, with humorous gesture and emphasis:
“Brother Cosroe, I find myself aggrieved,
Yet insufficient to express the same,
For it requires a great and thundering speech!”
“By-the-bye,” he continued, as he poured out a glass of ale from the foam-capped jug, “it’s beyond all doubt that Grubb is wrong in his calculation. He says, you remember, that the proportion of unstopt lines in the ‘Two Gentlemen’ is one in eleven. Now I make it one in nine decimal fifteen, and I’ve been over it twice with the utmost care. This is a point of considerable importance. Take that chair, Kingcote.”
“Thank you,” Kingcote said, “I shall not eat.”
“Why not? There’s pippins and cheese to come. Then, at least, as Claudius said to the chickens, drink.”
Kingcote declined, in spite of much hospitable pressure, and kept his arm-chair. Mr. Vissian applying himself to his supper, talked in intervals of mastication.