"Well, it's all the same thing, isn't it?" said Cecilia. "Anyhow, I heard you making a most frightful row."
"Of course I was making a row. So would you make a row if people suddenly mistook you for a Teddy Bear or something and started bunging you about the room."
"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about," said Cecilia, "but I think you're being intensely vulgar."
"Vulgar! 'Vulgar,' she says." He laughed bitterly. "You'd be vulgar too if you'd had that great hulking brute" (he pointed at me) "sitting on the small of your back, and a hooligan of a boy—"
Cecilia sat up and took notice.
"Hooligan!" she said, "Hooligan! Who's a Hooligan?"
"Sh! sister," I murmured. "You'll strain the epiglottis."
John turned on me savagely.
"You keep quiet. It isn't your epi—epi—what you said—and, anyway, can't I even have a quiet row with my own wife without—"
"John, calm yourself," said Cecilia crushingly. "Alan, tell me what you've been doing."