"She was just saying," I said bitterly, "how grateful she was to both of us."
"I don't understand."
"It is not hard to understand," she said, smiling. I wanted to slap her. "Father was unreasonable because he was ill. You have made him well. I can never thank you enough."
But she rather overdid the joy part of it, and he leaned over and looked in her face.
"I think I'm stupid," he said. "I know I'm unhappy. But isn't that what I was to do—to make them well if I could?"
"How could anybody know—" she began angrily, and then stopped. "You have done even more," she said sweetly. "You've turned them into cherubims and seraphims. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. Ugh! How I hate amiability raised to the NTH power!"
He smiled. I think it was getting through his thick man's skull that she wasn't so happy as she should have been, and he was thrilled through and through.
"My amiability must be the reason you dislike me!" he suggested. They had both forgotten me.
"Do I dislike you?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "I never really thought about it, but I'm sure I don't." She didn't look at him, she looked at me. She knew I knew she lied.
His smile faded.