“Walk on your heels, why don’t you?”
Algernon, escorting Catherine, made this suggestion as she picked her way across a narrow muddy crossing, her white party skirts gathered in one hand. Catherine, poising with difficulty on the toe of one foot, turned and looked at him.
“It just muddies my heels, and then my heels muddy my skirts. Of course, you boys with 88 trousers–” then, toppling, she righted herself and leaped across the last puddle.
“Trousers,” said Algernon, getting to her side again, “were worn in Abyssinia as early as–”
Catherine heaved a mighty sigh.
“It’s like going out for a stroll with the Century Book of Facts to walk with you, Algernon Swinburne,” she declared suddenly. “Do you think in statistics party-nights, even? Haven’t you any uninstructive thoughts for warm evenings?”
Algernon regarded her silently.
“Am I such a bore?” he asked quietly.
Catherine caught her breath. She recalled swiftly her father’s having said: “If Algernon should once find out that he was a bore, it would probably cure him. He has a lot of sense.” And here he was finding it out, on her hands, just because she had, for once, made her groaning comment on his conversation audibly instead of to herself!
It was a serious moment.