But Jane faced about at once. "Well, then, he paints—"
She dragged him toward the centre-table, grasped his wrist, and forced him to make several dabs and passes at the fatal newspaper, which still lay there with a bland impassivity between drop-light and book-rack. "That's how we dash off our little sketches," she declared.
"Goodness, Jane!" cried Alice, "you've almost upset the whole inkstand!"
"And what else is there?" cried Jane, whose mood was mounting higher. She clamped her hand on her disordered bang. "Why, of course! He fences!—aha!"
To this address Truesdale allowed himself to respond. He had no wish to obtrude his musical and artistic doings upon his father until a more definite modus vivendi had been brought about; but he could no longer lend himself passively to being made an absurdity by the over-enthusiasm of his sister. Fencing, now, was a manly art of which his father might not disapprove.
"On guard!" he cried. With his right hand he snatched up a paper-cutter from the table, curled up his left arm behind him, threw one of his long legs out in front and landed it with a flump! on the floor five feet ahead of his initial stand-point.
"Hurray!" cried Jane, shrilly. "What other girls do you know who've got a brother like this?" She snatched up a brass-edged ruler that had lain alongside the paper-cutter. Mrs. Rhodes started back; Alice's husband, who had come in to lead the homeward march to Riverside Park, paused astonished on the threshold.
"On guard!" echoed Jane in turn. With a flump! of her own she threw herself into an imitation of the angular crouch that her brother had assumed. "Go it!" she called, and began to hack at the paper-cutter with her ruler.
Save for the clash of weapons there was a complete silence. Suddenly
Truesdale reversed his position. Jane did the same, bringing a sudden and
unaccustomed weight upon her other foot. Her knee cracked loudly.
Everybody heard it. Rosy snickered.
Jane crossed the room and sat down in a shady corner. In that ten seconds she felt ten years older.