'Oh, please do,' she said, with a piteous little expression of appeal. 'I'm so uncomfortable, and my foot's going to sleep. And you needn't be horrid to me.'
'I didn't know you really meant it,' he said, getting up obediently and doing what was required of him.
'I didn't,' she answered, as soon as he had finished. 'But I know you're a lazy creature, and I merely wanted to see if I could make you move when I'd warned you immediately before that—I was a womanly woman.'
'I wonder if you'd make Alec MacKenzie do that?' laughed Dick, good-naturedly.
'Good heavens, I'd never try. Haven't you discovered that women know by instinct what men they can make fools of, and they only try their arts on them? They've gained their reputation for omnipotence only on account of their robust common-sense, which leads them only to attack fortresses which are already half demolished.'
'That suggests to my mind that every woman is a Potiphar's wife, though every man isn't a Joseph,' said Dick.
'Your remark is too blunt to be witty,' returned Mrs. Crowley, 'but it's not without its grain of truth.'
Lucy, smiling, listened to the nonsense they talked. In their company she lost all sense of reality; Mrs. Crowley was so fragile, and Dick had such a whimsical gaiety, that she could not treat them as real persons. She felt herself a grown-up being assisting at some childish game in which preposterous ideas were bandied to and fro like answers in the game of consequences.
'I never saw people wander from the subject as you do,' she protested. 'I can't imagine what connection there is between whether Mr. MacKenzie would arrange Julia's footstool, and the profligacy of the female sex.'
'Don't be hard on us,' said Mrs. Crowley. 'I must work off my flippancy before he arrives, and then I shall be ready to talk imperially.'