Part 6

'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.'

'When does Alec come?' asked Dick.

'Now, this very minute. I've sent a carriage to meet him at the station. You won't let him depress me, will you?'

'Why did you ask him if he affects you in that way?' asked Lucy, laughing.

'But I like him--at least I think I do--and in any case, I admire him, and I'm sure he's good for me. And Mr. Lomas wanted me to ask him, and he plays bridge extraordinarily well. And I thought he would be interesting. The only thing I have against him is that he never laughs when I say a clever thing, and looks so uncomfortably at me when I say a foolish one.'

'I'm glad I laugh when you say a clever thing,' said Dick.

'You don't. But you roar so heartily at your own jokes that if I hurry up and slip one in before you've done, I can often persuade myself that you're laughing at mine.'

'And do you like Alec MacKenzie, Lucy?' asked Dick.

She paused for a moment before she answered, and hesitated.

'I don't know,' she said. 'Sometimes I think I rather dislike him. But I'm like Julia, I certainly admire him.'

'I suppose he is rather alarming,' said Dick. 'He's difficult to know, and he's obviously impatient with other people's affectations. There's a certain grimness about him which disturbs you unless you know him intimately.'

'He's your greatest friend, isn't he?'

'He is.'

Dick paused for a little while.

'I've known him for twenty years now, and I look upon him as the greatest man I've ever set eyes on. I think it's an inestimable privilege to have been his friend.'

'I've not noticed that you treated him with especial awe,' said Mrs. Crowley.

'Heaven save us!' cried Dick. 'I can only hold my own by laughing at him persistently.'

'He bears it with unexampled good-nature.'

'Have I ever told you how I made his acquaintance? It was in about fifty fathoms of water, and at least a thousand miles from land.'

'What an inconvenient place for an introduction!'

'We were both very wet. I was a young fool in those days, and I was playing the giddy goat--I was just going up to Oxford, and my wise father had sent me to America on a visit to enlarge my mind--I fell over-board, and was proceeding to drown, when Alec jumped in after me and held me up by the hair of my head.'