She shrugged her shoulders.
"Tides ebb and flow, men come and go," quoted Meavy dreamily.
"One man's arrived," said Lady Wereminster. "A year ago we were bemoaning the drowsiness of the Empire. She has awakened now. I suppose, to carry on Mr. Hare's simile, she has had a good shaking. Every one needs it in his day."
"I'm sure I don't," said Dora Farquharson, breaking in. "Richard, do scold Lady Wereminster. She says I need shaking—I'm sure I don't, do I?"
"Oh, if we all got our deserts——" put in Hare somewhat grimly.
"Now Richard needs shaking if you like," continued Dora, who had begun, since marriage, to consider herself something of a wit. "He is the most impossible husband. Always off somewhere, at anybody's beck and call but mine. A dear boy, of course, but hopeless to live with. If he had married an unamiable wife I don't know what he would have done. When he's at home, he always says he is too busy to be disturbed."
"You don't agree with the axiom that women ought to marry men they dislike because it is the only way of avoiding them, then?" said Lady Wereminster.
Dora simpered.
"Oh no. I was always romantic—just the opposite to Richard. Not that I want to complain of you, old boy." She leant across the table and tapped her husband on the arm. "You're quite a good sort in your way; you don't mind your little wife chaffing you occasionally, do you?"
"No man is a hero to his—wife," Creagh misquoted gently.