“And how was Eben?” asked the Doña.
“Oh, he was in great form—really extraordinarily funny about getting drunk at Gibraltar,” drawled Concha; she always drawled when she was angry, embarrassed, or “feeling grand.”
“Oh! the English always get drunk at Gibraltar—it wasn’t at all original of Eben.”
“I suppose not,” and again Concha yawned.
“And I suppose Mrs. Moore said, ‘Ebenebeneben! Prenny guard!’ which meant that one of the Sunday school children was coming up the path and he must be careful what he said.”
Concha gurgled with laughter—pleasantly, like a child being tickled—at the Doña’s mimicry; and the atmosphere cleared.
Teresa remembered Guy Cust’s once saying that conversation among members of one family was a most uncomfortable thing. When one asks questions it is not for information (one knows the answers already) but to annoy. It is, he had said, as if four or five men, stranded for years on a desert island with a pack of cards, had got into the habit of playing poker all day long, and that, though the game has lost all savour and all possibilities of surprise; for each knowing so well the “play” of the other, no bluff ever succeeds, and however impassive their opponent’s features, they can each immediately, by the sixth sense of intimacy, distinguish the smell of a “full house,” or a “straight,” from that of a “pair.”
For instance, the Doña and Teresa knew quite well where Concha had been that afternoon; and Concha had known that they would know and pretend that they did not, so she had arrived irritated in advance, and the Doña and Teresa had watched her approach, maliciously amused in advance.
“Well, and was Mrs. Moore hinting again that she would like to have her Women’s Institute in my garden?” asked the Doña.
“Oh, yes, and she wants Teresa to go down to the Institute one night and talk to them about Seville, but I was quite firm and said I was sure nothing would induce her.”