"We-ell, I'm all right. What's the matter with me?"
"Nothing at all that I know of, darling." But it does cross the speaker's mind that the context of circumstances might make this an opportunity for getting at some information she wants. For Sally has remained perfectly inscrutable about Conrad Vereker, and Rosalind has been asking herself whether it is possible that, after all, there is nothing. She doesn't know how to set about
it, though. Perhaps the best thing would be to take a leaf out of Sally's own book, and go straight to the bull's-eye.
"Do you really want to know what I was thinking of, Sallykin?" But no sooner has she formulated the intention of asking a question, and allowed the intention to creep into her voice than Sally knows all about it.
"As if I don't know already. You mean me and Prosy."
"Of course. But how did you know?"
"Mammy dear! As if I was born yesterday! If you want people not to know things, you mustn't have delicate inflexions of voice. I knew you were going to catechize about Prosy the minute you got to 'did I really want to know.'"
"But I'm not going to catechize, chick. Only when you ask me what I'm thinking about, and really want to know, I tell you. I was thinking about you and Conrad Vereker." For some mysterious reason this mention of his name in full seems to mature the conversation, and make clearer definition necessary.
Our own private opinion is that any one who closely observes human communion will see that two-thirds of it runs on lines like the foregoing. Very rarely indeed does a human creature say what it means. Exhaustive definition, lucid statements, concise terminology—even plain English—are foreign to its nature. The congenial soil in which the fruit of Intelligence ripens is Suggestion, and the wireless telegraphs of the mind are the means by which it rejoices to communicate. Don't try to say what you mean—because you can't. You are not clever enough. Try to mean what you want to say, and leave the dictionary to take care of itself.
This little bit of philosophizing of ours has just given Sally time, pondering gravely with the eyebrows all at rest and lips at ease, to deal with the developed position created by the mere substitution of a name for a nickname.