"You mean Senior Aide Forbes?" asked Maynard, feeling the back of his neck bristle. If he'd been possessed of any kind of mane, it would have stood up in anger.
"Senior aide? How did she get that rank?" scorned Laura.
"She worked for it. And hard."
"Slinging hash?"
"No, you little twirp. She went to a school for Patrol Nurse Corps and paid for her tuition by working nights."
"She could have made a better night-living than working in a beanery," snapped Laura.
Slap!
Maynard had been raised as a normal youngster. His mother had done her best to instill the instincts of a gentleman in her son Guy, and at an early age he discovered that little girls are not to be beaten over the skull with a toy truck, and that beebee guns make little round bruises when they hit little girls' legs, and that produced bad evidence. Little girls, he learned, had no such restriction upon their action, but could let him have a few quick blows without suffering the consequences. On the other hand, he soon discovered that at best their blows didn't count for much, and so he learned that hitting women was taking an unfair advantage.
But hitting with the tongue had never been explained to Maynard's satisfaction. Laura Greggor was being just too open with her scorn. And so Maynard, who never had hit a lady before, slapped Laura Greggor across the face.
"You hit me," she said in absolute surprise and equally absolute anger.