“You’d better not try without a rope.”
Just then their conversation was interrupted by Florence’s clear voice:
“When you two people have quite finished staring at those disgusting bones, perhaps, Eva, you will come home to lunch. If you only knew how silly you look, sprawling there like two Turks going to be bastinadoed, perhaps you would get up.”
This was too much for Eva; she got up at once, and Jeremy followed suit.
“Why could you not let us examine our bones in peace, Florence?” said her sister, jokingly.
“Because you are really too idiotic. You see, Mr. Jones, anything that is old and fusty, and has to do with old fogies who are dead and gone centuries ago, has the greatest charms for my sister. She would like to go home and make stories about those bones: whose they were, and what they did, and all the rest of it. She calls it imagination; I call it fudge.”
Eva flushed up, but said nothing; evidently she was not accustomed to answer her elder sister, and presently they parted to go their separate ways.
“What a great oaf that Jeremy is!” said Florence to her sister on their homeward way.
“I did not think him an oaf at all,” she replied, warmly; “I thought him very nice.”
Florence shrugged her square shoulders. “Well, of course, if you like a giant with as much brain as an owl, there is nothing more to be said. You should see Ernest; he is nice, if you like.”