Agatha turned over her newspaper impatiently. Mrs. Harrington was listening with an air of the keenest interest, which might have been sarcastic.
“Poor Luke had not quite so much gold braid--”
Agatha looked up, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker collapsed.
“I should think,” she added, after some nervous shufflings in her seat, “that a sword is a great nuisance. Should you not think so, Marion dear?”
“I do not know,” replied Mrs. Harrington; “I never wore one.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker laughed eagerly at herself, after the manner of persons who cannot afford to keep up a decent self-respect.
“But I always rather think,” she went on, with an apprehensive glance towards her daughter, “that a sword is out of place in a drawing-room, or--or anywhere where there are carpets, you know.”
“I thought you had never seen one before,” put in Agatha, without looking up from her newspaper. “In a room--close at hand, you know.”
“No--no, of course not; but I knew, dear, that they were worn. Of course, in warfare it is different.”
“In warfare,” said Mrs. Harrington patiently, “they are usually supposed to come in rather handy.”