4
After luncheon most of them played Snooker, to the accompaniment of the gramophone, Anna and Jasper taking turns in changing the records.
Eben had hurt his hand, so he sat and talked to Teresa on the sofa.
It was a fact that had always both puzzled and annoyed her that he evidently enjoyed talking to her.
“Have you read Compton Mackenzie’s last?” he asked.
Why would every one persist in talking to her about books? And why did he not say, “the last Compton Mackenzie?” She decided that his diction had been influenced by frequenting his mother’s Women’s Institute and hearing continually of “little Ernest, Mrs. Brown’s second,” or “Mrs. Kett’s last.”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”
“I’ll lend it to you—I’m not sure if it’s as good as the others, though ... it’s funny, but I’m very fastidious about novels; the only thing I really care about is style—I’m a regular sensualist about fine English.”
“Are you? Perhaps you will like this, then—‘I remember Father Benson saying with his fascinating little stutter: He has such a g-g-gorgeously multitudinous mind’?”