"Well, then—suppose we do, my dear!" said the gentleman, conciliatorily. "Let me see—what was I going to say just now—at the Koodoo? Awfully sensible thing, only something put it out of my head."
"You must recollect it for yourself," said the lady, with some severity. "I certainly cannot help you."
The gentleman never seemed to resent what was apparently the habitual manner of his lady wife. He walked on beside her, puffing contentedly, and apparently recollecting abortively; until, to stimulate his memory, she said rather crisply:—"Well?" He then resumed:—"Not so sensible as I thought it was, but somethin' in it for all that! Don't you know, sometimes, when you don't speak on the nail, sometimes, you lose your chance, and then you can't get on the job again, sometimes? You get struck. See what I mean?"
"Perhaps I shall, if you explain it more clearly," said his wife, with civility and forbearance, both of the controversial variety.
"I mean that if I had told Adrian then and there that he was an unreasonable chap to expect anyone to believe that his eyesight came back with a jump, of itself—because that was the tale they told, you know——"
"That was the tale."
"Then very likely he would have told me the whole story. But I was rather an ass, and let the thing slip at the time—and then I couldn't pick it up again. Never got a chance!"
"Precisely. Just like a man! Men are so absurdly secretive with one another. They won't this and they won't that, until one is surprised at nothing. I quite see that you couldn't rake it up now, seventeen years afterwards."
"Seventeen years! Come—I say!"