“What?”
“And you knocked me in order to poison her mind against me and finally remove me from your path.”
I had never heard anything so absolutely loopy in my life. Why, dash it, I’ve known Angela since she was so high. You don’t fall in love with close relations you’ve known since they were so high. Besides, isn’t there something in the book of rules about a man may not marry his cousin? Or am I thinking of grandmothers?
“Tuppy, my dear old ass,” I cried, “this is pure banana oil! You’ve come unscrewed.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Me in love with Angela? Ha-ha!”
“You can’t get out of it with ha-ha’s. She called you ‘darling’.”
“I know. And I disapproved. This habit of the younger g. of scattering ‘darlings’ about like birdseed is one that I deprecate. Lax, is how I should describe it.”
“You tickled her ankles.”
“In a purely cousinly spirit. It didn’t mean a thing. Why, dash it, you must know that in the deeper and truer sense I wouldn’t touch Angela with a barge pole.”