"For shame, Mr. Durant; you encourage him."
"I, Mrs. Fazakerly?"
"Yes, you. It was you who brought the Nineteenth Century into the house, wasn't it? Depend upon it, he's been reading something that he's disagreed with, or that's disagreed with him."
Durant remembered. There were things about bacteriology in that Nineteenth Century, and about hypnotism; the Colonel had apparently seized on them as on fuel for a perishing fire.
Heedless of the frivolous interruption, the little gentleman was working himself into a second intellectual fury.
"Take hypnotism again—there's another abstraction for you——"
Here Mrs. Fazakerly threw up her hands. "My dear Colonel, de grâce! If it's an abstraction, why get into a passion about it? Life isn't long enough. You're worrying your brain into fiddlesticks—fiddlestrings I mean, of course. This child doesn't look after you. You ought to have something tied over your head to keep it down; it's like a Jack-in-the-box, a candle blazing away at both ends, a sword wearing out its what's-his-name; it's wearing out your friends, too. We can't live at intellectual high pressure, if you can."
The Colonel softened visibly under the delicious flattery of her appeal; he smiled at her and at Durant; he came down from his heights and made a concession to the popular taste. "Well, then, take influenza——"
"We'd very much rather not take it, if it's all the same to you."
"Take what?"