Her companion forgot to reply, in the absorbing attention he was giving her.
“Don’t sit there staring at me like—like a Dutch dog!” exclaimed Nina, throwing an infinitesimal bit of cracker at him. “It always makes me think you are trying to mesmerise me. Do something.”
He submissively took up a book.
“How stupid men are!” she ejaculated. “Don’t you see I am just in the humour for a talk? Put that book down this instant.”
He dropped it with a smile.
“You may smoke,” she observed, graciously; “I know you are dying for the permission.”
He reached behind him, and, taking down a pipe, carefully filled and lighted it.
“Nasty, detestable habit,” she said, with a cough; “do you know it is killing you by inches?”
He looked not a whit disturbed, and, after a careful review of his features, she said, jealously: “Other men have smoking-caps. You ought to have one. I wonder what would be most becoming to you: dark blue velvet, embroidered with red, or dark green, with yellow. I think the blue. What are you smiling at?”
He took his pipe out of his mouth long enough to say, “To see you practical again. You have had your head in the clouds all day.”