"Who know more about what?" Gedge inquired.
"Why about the place. I mean they have their ideas—of what everything is, and where it is, and what it isn't and where it should be. They do ask questions," she said, yet not so much in warning as in the complacency of being herself seasoned and sound; "and they're down on you when they think you go wrong. As if you ever could! You know too much," she astutely smiled; "or you will."
"Oh you mustn't know too much, must you?" And Gedge now smiled as well. He knew, he thought, what he meant.
"Well, you must know as much as anybody else. I claim at any rate that I do," Miss Putchin declared. "They never really caught me out."
"I'm very certain of that"—and Mrs. Gedge had an elation almost personal.
"Surely," he said, "I don't want to be caught out." She rejoined that in such a case he would have Them down on him, and he saw that this time she meant the powers above. It quickened his sense of all the elements that were to reckon with, yet he felt at the same time that the powers above were not what he should most fear. "I'm glad," he observed, "that they ever ask questions; but I happened to notice, you know, that no one did to-day."
"Then you missed several—and no loss. There were three or four put to me too silly to remember. But of course they mostly are silly."
"You mean the questions?"
She laughed with all her cheer. "Yes, sir; I don't mean the answers."
Whereupon, for a moment snubbed and silent, he felt like one of the crowd. Then it made him slightly vicious. "I didn't know but you meant the people in general—till I remembered that I'm to understand from you that they're wise, only occasionally breaking down."