She echoes his false mirth with no inferior exasperation.
"Who is ill-bred now?"
Her tone calls him back to a sense of the ungentleman-likeness and puerility of his conduct.
"I!"—he replies contritely—"undoubtedly I! but——"
"Do not apologize," interrupts she, recovering her equanimity with that ease which she has transmitted to her son; "I like you for standing up for them if they are your friends; and I hope that you will do the same good office for me when someone sticks pins into me behind my back; but come now, let us be rational; surely we may talk quietly about them without insulting each other, may not we?"
"I do not know; we can try."
"I suppose"—a little ironically—"that you are not so sensitive about them but that you can bear me to ask a few perfectly harmless questions?"
He writhes. "Of course! of course! what are they to me?—they are nothing to me!"
A look of incredulity, which she perhaps does not take any very great pains to conceal, spreads over her face.
"Then you really will be doing me a great service if you tell me just exactly all you know about them, good and bad."