One day, as they sat at the table in the middle of the room, Julian said to her:
"I say, Cuckoo, why d'you look at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Why d'you stare at me? Anything wrong?"
"I wasn't staring at you," she asserted. "The sun gets in my eyes if I look the other way."
"I'll draw the blind down," he said.
He got up from the table and shut the afternoon sun out. The tea-tray, the photographs, the little dogs, they two, were plunged in a greenish twilight manufactured by the sun with the assistance of the Venetian blind.
"There," Julian said, sitting down again, "now we shall all look ghostly."
"But if I do take a fancy to look at you, why shouldn't I, then?" Cuckoo asked.
"I don't mind," he laughed. "But you didn't seem pleased with me, I thought."