Marc withdrew his hand frigidly and resisted a yawn. "Now we're right back in the same old soup."
Toffee scanned the Congress with a sweeping glance. "Don't tell me you're afraid of this collection of old nincompoops?" she scoffed.
She pointed to a bemused, bald-pated individual across the way who was engaged to the last nerve in the business of engraving a pierced heart in the top of the table in front of him. Across from this exhibit sat a lank citizen who was quietly strumming a guitar and chanting a ballad which had to do with a lonesome cowboy whose horse was dead, house was burned, well was dry, range was barren, and he himself was suffering from pernicious anemia—which individual, nonetheless, wished to assure his faithless sweetheart that she was not to worry for a minute that his affairs were anything other than tickety-boo and that he would 'git' along somehow.
Marc observed these examples of high-minds-at-work with a wry face. "That's just the trouble," he grieved, "they're completely irrational. Heaven knows what they might take a fancy to do to us. Your entrance didn't help any, you know."
"Nonsense," Toffee said. "They're just a bunch of harmless children."
"So harmless," Marc snorted, "they've danced the whole nation right down the path to extinction."
"Oh, that," Toffee said, smiling secretively. "I wouldn't worry about that. I wouldn't waste the time."
"Oh, you wouldn't, wouldn't you?" Marc said annoyedly. "Well, let me remind you, Miss Cotton Brain, that you're subject to the laws of extinction just as much as the rest of us. When I die you go with me, you know, and after the way you've messed up my final hours I will consider it a pleasure to perish just to get even with you. I will laugh as the bombs come crashing down on my roof."
"You're doing me a terrible injustice," Toffee said.