“Cruel,” protested Allyne. “And to punish you, Mrs. March, I shall ask Mrs. Fair to allow me to take you down to dinner.”
“I protest,” shouted Sir Nelson with fine gallantry; “I claim her.”
“Jealous,” sneered Allyne. “Shame! Why, Poynter, your bald spot is as big as your brain area—and Lady Poynter here, too. Fie on you!”
“But Mrs. Fair can’t give Mrs. March any such sentence as placing her at your mercy, Allyne,” said Travers; “for it is a principle of law that it is unlawful to inflict any unusual and cruel punishments.”
“Well, since you men can’t talk of anything except Mrs. March, I for one am jealous,” cheerily put in Lady Poynter, with her cap bobbing about prettily, “and I hope that Mrs. Fair will punish her by making her listen to Mr. Allyne for two hours.”
“But, I say, you know,” broke in Sir Poynter, while all the men added their protests to such a disposition of the widow.
“Just hear them all, will you?” cried Mrs. Fair, lifting her hands. “I fear, my dear Lady Poynter, that to have a husband is fatal to success. Every blessed one of them wants to sit by Mrs. March.”
“Of course we do,” exclaimed Allyne. “You see, my dear Mrs. Fair, that, while we all love you and dear Lady Poynter, we can’t quite go those ridiculous appendages of yours, to wit., Mr. Fair and Sir Nelson. If you could get rid of them, you know—and there are several ways—then you would give even the peerless Mrs. March a close run.”
“Why have you never married?” asked Mrs. March.
“Can’t, you know—regularly can’t,” replied Allyne, with a woebegone expression. “I could never think of marrying anyone but a widow, and, as I consider widows the only desirable women, it would be against my principles to reduce their number by marrying one of them, you know.”