"Of course you didn't; you couldn't have, and wouldn't have. But anybody could tell what you meant, just the same, by leaving your mouth open when you'd done speaking." We confess
freely that we should not have known, but what are we? Why should Lætitia's having left her lips slightly ajar, instead of closing them, have "meant Dr. Vereker"?
But the fact is—to quote an expression of Sally's own—brain-waves were the rule and not the exception with her. And hypnotic suggestion raged as between her and Miss Lætitia Wilson, interrupting practice, and involving the performers in wide-ranging, irrelevant discussion. It was on a musical occasion at Ladbroke Grove Road that this conversation took place.
Lætitia wasn't going to deny Dr. Vereker, evidently, or else there really was something very engrossing about her G string. Sally went on, while she dog's-eared her music, which was new, to get good turning-over advantages when it came to playing.
"My medical adviser's not bad, taken as an aunt. I don't quite know what I should do without poor Prosy. But as for anything, of course that's absurd. Why, half the fun is that there isn't anything!"
Lætitia knew as well as possible that her young friend, once started, would develop the subject on her own lines without further help from her. She furnished her face with a faint expression of amused waiting, not strong enough to be indictable, but operative, and said never a word.
"Foolery would spoil it all," pursued Sally; "in fact, I put my foot down at the first go-off. I pointed out that I stipulated to be considered a chap. Prosy showed tact—I must say that for Prosy—distinctly tact. You see, if I had had to say a single word to him on the subject, it would have been all up." Then possibly, in response to a threat of an inflexion in her friend's waiting countenance, "I should say, when I make use of the expression 'pointed out,' perhaps I ought to say 'conveyed to him.'" Sally gets the viola in place for a start, and asks is her friend ready? Waiting, it seems; so she merely adds, "Yes, I should say conveyed it to him." And off they go with the new piece of music in B flat, and are soon involved in terrifying complications which have to be done all over again. At the end, they are ungrateful to B flat, and say they don't care much for it; it will be better when they can play it, however. Then Lætitia schemes to wind Sally up a little.
"Doesn't the Goody goozle at you about him, though? You said she did."
"The Goody—oh yes! (By-the-bye, mother says I mustn't call your ma Goody Wilson, or I shall do it to her face, and there'll be a pretty how-do-you-do.) Prosy's parent broods over one, and gloats as if one was crumpets; but Prosy himself is very good about her—aware of her shortcomings."