“Oh, I thought you meant it.”
“I do mean it, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll be warned in time.”
Polly turned, expecting to find Marie Louise showing her contemptuous amusement, but the look she saw on Marie Louise’s face was disconcerting. Polly’s loyalty remained staunch. She hated Lady Clifton-Wyatt anyway, and the thought that she might be telling the truth made her a little more hatable. Polly stormed:
“I won’t permit you to slander my best friend.”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt replied, “I don’t slahnda hah, and if she is yaw best friend––well––”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt hated Polly and was glad of the weapon against her. Polly felt a sudden terrific need of retorting with a blow. Men had never given up the fist on the mouth as the simple, direct answer to an insult too complicated for any other retort. She wanted to slap Lady Clifton-Wyatt’s face. But she did not know how to fight. Perhaps women will acquire the male prerogative of the smash in the jaw along with the other once exclusive masculine privileges. It will do them no end of good and help to clarify all life for them. But for the present Polly could only groan, “Agh!” and turn to throw an arm about Marie Louise and drag her forward.
“I’d believe one word of Marie Louise against a thousand of yours,” she declared.
“Very well––ahsk hah, then.”
Polly was crying mad, and madder than ever because she hated herself for crying when she got mad. She almost sobbed now to Marie Louise, “Tell her it’s a dirty, rotten lie.”
Marie Louise had been dragged to her feet. She temporized, “What has she sai-said?”