“No,” answered Morris with energy; “I hate Beaulieu. I forgot, that is all; because I have so much to think about, I suppose.”
“So much? I thought that things were arranged now so that you had nothing at all to think about except how to spend your money and be happy with me, and adore the dear angels—Yes, I think that perhaps the nurse had better take her away. Touch the bell, will you? There, she’s gone. Keep her well wrapped up, and mind the draught, nurse.
“No, don’t get up yet, Morris; I want to talk to you. You have been very gloomy of late, just like you used to be before you married, mooning about and staring at nothing. And what on earth do you do sitting up to all hours of the morning in that ghosty old chapel, where I wouldn’t be alone at twelve o’clock for a hundred pounds?”
“I read,” said Morris.
“Read? Read what? Novels?”
“Sometimes,” answered Morris.
“Oh, how can you tell such fibs? Why, that last book by Lady What’s-her-name which came in the Mudie box—the one they say is so improper—has been lying on your table for over two months, and you can’t tell me yet what it was the heroine did wrong. Morris, you are not inventing anything more, are you?”
Here was an inspiration. “I admit that I am thinking of a little thing,” he said with diffidence, as though he were a budding poet with a sonnet on his mind.
“A little thing? What little thing?”
“Well, a new kind of aerophone designed to work uninfluenced by its twin.”