"Are you angry, Peter?"
"Not in the least; I am only sorry that my smoking annoyed you—had I known before—"
"It didn't annoy me in the least!"
"But from what you said I understood—"
"No, Peter, you did not understand; you never understand, and I don't think you ever will understand anything but your Helens and Phrynes—and your Latin and Greek philosophies, and that is what makes you so very annoying, and so—so quaintly original!"
"But you certainly found fault with my pipe."
"Naturally!—didn't you find fault with my humming?"
"Really," said I, "really, I fail to see—"
"Of course you do!" sighed Charmian. Whereupon there fell a silence between us, during which she sewed industriously, and I went forth with brave Hector to face the mighty Achilles. But my eye had traversed barely twenty lines when:
"Peter?"