“Then why don’t you come in?”
“You know I can’t.”
“Because of those few high words? How absurd!”
“We won’t go into that now.”
“Yes, we will. You don’t want to eat humble pie. But it isn’t humble pie,” she laughed, with a desperate attempt at merriment, “it’s steak and kidney pie! So there!”
“But, Jinny, he forbade me to cross his sill!”
“You old goose! He never thought we’d cross it arm in arm. Like this! Come along—won’t he open his eyes and wipe his spectacles!”
He shook off her arm. “It’s no laughing matter, Jinny. An oath is an oath.”
“An oath!” she repeated dully. The violence of that grotesque collision had blurred her memory of its minutiæ.
“You can’t have forgotten? He laid his hand on the Bible—he vowed to the Almighty I should never cross your threshold.”