"I wish I were dead!"
"H'm. You look like it."
There was no reply for a second or two. The first speaker was carefully extricating herself from the hammock in which she had been idly swinging under the shade of a smoke-begrimed lime-tree.
"No," she said at last, shaking out the folds of her dainty blue gown, "I flatter myself that I do not look like it. I have often told you, my dear Mona, that from the point of view of success in practice, the art of dressing one's hair is at least as important as the art of dissecting."
She gave an adjusting touch to her dark-red curls and drew herself to her full height, as though she were defying the severest critic to say that she did not live up to her principles. Presently her whole bearing collapsed, so to speak, into abject despair, half real, half assumed. "But I do wish I were dead, all the same," she said.
"Well, I don't see why you should make me wish it too. Why don't you go on with your book?"
"Go on with it! I like that! I never began. I have not turned a page for the last half-hour. That's all the credit I get for my self-repression! What time is it?"
"A quarter past twelve."
"Is that all? And the lists won't be up till two. When shall we start?"
"About three, if we are wise—when the crush is over."