"Do sit down," she said. "You'll get another temperature with so much talking."
"It's no argument, Mrs. Robson, either to send me after a cotton reel or to tell me I've got a cold. The one is on the table. The other is on my chest. You are shirking issues, and only robbing me of my dignity without gaining any yourself!"
"But it's a great advantage to me to rob you of your dignity. Look at you! A full blown author, who has published a book, though you do say a lot of silly things in it. And who has been to college, though you don't seem to have been taught much sense there! If I do try to bring you to my level a bit, by making you mend the fire—and, by the way, you've held that shovel in your hands for quite five minutes—surely you can't complain, you, who so hotly uphold the cause of equality."
"You are cruel," groaned David. His mock-heroic voice was rendered doubly effective by the cold in his throat, and Mary looked up to laugh. But he, suddenly sat down, his elbows on the table, and his chin resting on his hands. "Honestly though," he added seriously, "can't you see a little bit what I'm driving at, or am I unutterably stupid and boring? Or am I just rude? I don't want to be just rude, because you've been kinder to me than I could possibly have imagined."
"What you call kindness," remarked Mary, with an airy gesture of her scissors, "was merely a piece of propaganda on behalf of my fellow-capitalists. What I'm really worried about is that you will insist on going to-morrow. You're not fit to, you know. You had a temperature till last night."
"But I can't stay here. I've taken up three of your days already, and though I may consider you waste your time, trying to pauperize a village, and might spend it far more profitably restoring to health a friend of society like myself, I can't exactly expect you to look at it that way, can I?"
"Oh, do be serious for a minute. You know that you're not any trouble here. John regards you as a harmless lunatic who would be quite a pleasant fellow if he didn't pretend to know something of agricultural conditions. And I find you very useful in folding sheets for me—to say nothing of keeping my wits about me. You are a very strenuous conversationalist."
"All right. I will be serious." He seated himself on the table. It was always impossible for him to remain in the same attitude for two consecutive minutes. "I can't stay here because I mean to blow up this house, and this farm and, if necessary, this village. I think that you and Mr. Robson are charming as people, but iniquitous as an institution; and, if I stay here any longer, I shall like you both so much that I shan't be able to hate you. As it is, every time you are nice to me, I have to recite little pieces of Marx to myself to convince me what an abomination you really are."
Mary's eyes twinkled.
"Oh, do recite some now," she begged.