"You're making fun of me," she complained pettishly.
"No I'm not. Not really. Anyone can be scared right out of his skin when something like that happens unexpectedly."
"All right," she said, and the humor was gone from her voice. "So you are not making fun of me. You've been playing a very serious game with me, haven't you?"
Farradyne thought fast but came up with only, "What makes you think—"
"Let's drop our masks, Charles."
"Masks? Look, Carolyn, I'd rather go clean up this glass."
"Sweep it up, then. But while you're cleaning up, we'll talk seriously."
"About what?" He got a brush from the locker and a square of cardboard from the bottom of a ream of paper, and started to collect the debris.
"What do you know about our language?"
"Damned little. Frankly, I'd had only a very insecure suspicion right up to the moment that you admitted it that there was any language involved."