On which I was the more amused that I had to explain I was only amused. “What does it signify now?”
“I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full,” she cried, “of signification!”
“Yes, but we’re further out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything becomes absolute.”
“What else can he do with decency?” Mrs. Nettlepoint went on. “If, as my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you’d think that stranger still. Then you would do what he does, and where would be the difference?”
“How do you know what he does? I haven’t mentioned him for twenty-four hours.”
“Why, she told me herself. She came in this afternoon.”
“What an odd thing to tell you!” I commented.
“Not as she says it. She says he’s full of attention, perfectly devoted—looks after her all the time. She seems to want me to know it, so that I may approve him for it.”
“That’s charming; it shows her good conscience.”
“Yes, or her great cleverness.”