“Well! She very speedily found something that she liked better. Katrine was not a happy illustration, young woman! In your ever-present desire to be personal, you overlooked—”
“Exceptions prove the rule,” Grizel said stubbornly. “Besides, we were not discussing Katrine, we were discussing the roast-fowl dinner. Two Mallisons, the Hunters, Captain Peignton. Who else? We might as well make it up to ten while we are about it.”
Martin suggested the name of some young people whose parents had already entertained himself and his wife, and Grizel sighed, a long sigh of resignation.
“What shall we do with them afterwards?”
“Talk.”
“They can’t talk, bless you! Don’t know how.”
“Then you must talk to them.”
“I can’t. A dull dinner party pumps me dry, and I simply cannot stand desultory drawls for an hour on top of it. I get fidgets, and yawn,—heavens, how I yawn! It’s not a mite of use telling me not to. I must. If I swallow them down my nose swells, and my eyes fill. I look as if I had hay fever... Do you never get fidgets at a dull party?”
“Mental?”
“No. Physical. In your legs. Far worse! They won’t keep still. I’ve lived through some shocking hours.—I’d rather play puss-in-the-corner, than talk twaddle for an hour on end.”