"Your argument being," I said, "that an honest man may sometimes steal a horse?"
"Yes, that is what I mean," said Mrs. Fielden delightedly.
"A dangerous doctrine, and one——"
"Not Plato, please," said Mrs. Fielden.
... It ended in our taking a flat in London for some weeks. It was a small dwelling, with an over-dressed little drawing-room, and a red dining-room, and a roomy cupboard for a smoking-room.
"Remember, Palestrina," I said to my sister when we settled down, "that we are under strict orders to live a very rapid and go-ahead life while we are in London. Can you suggest anything very rowdy that a crippled man with a crutch and a tendency to chills and malaria might undertake?"
"We might give a supper-party," said Palestrina brilliantly, "and have long-stemmed champagne-glasses, and perhaps cook something in a chafing-dish. I was reading a novel the other day in which the bad characters did this. I made a note of it at the time, meaning to ask you why it should be fast to cook things in a chafing-dish or to have long-stemmed champagne-glasses?"
When the evening came Mrs. Fielden dined with us, and she and Palestrina employed themselves after dinner in rehearsing how they should behave. My sister said in her low, gurgling voice: "I think I shall sit on the sofa with my arms spread out on the cushions on either side of me, and I shall thump them sometimes, as the adventuress in a play does."
"Or you might be singing at the piano," said Mrs. Fielden, "and then when the door opens you could toss the music aside and sail across the room, and give your left hand to whoever comes in first, and say, 'What a bore! you have come!' or something rude of that sort."
Mrs. Fielden's spirit of fun inspired my quiet sister to-night, and the two women, began masquerading in a way that was sufficiently amusing to a sick man lying on a sofa.