But I fancy the Colonel must have been tone-deaf. "Don't you make phrases for me!" he snorted; "you keep 'em for your menagerie Think! By gad, the world never thinks. I believe the world deliberately reads the six bestselling books in order to incapacitate itself for thinking." Then, his wrath gathering emphasis as he went on: "The longer I live the plainer I see Shakespeare was right--what fools these mortals be, and all that. There's that Haggage woman--speech-making through the country like a hiatused politician. It may be philanthropic, but it ain't ladylike--no, begad! What has she got to do with Juvenile Courts and child-labour in the South, I'd like to know? Why ain't she at home attending to that crippled boy of hers--poor little beggar!--instead of flaunting through America meddling with other folk's children?"
Miss Hugonin put another lump of sugar into his cup and deigned no reply.
"By gad," cried the Colonel fervently, "if you're so anxious to spend that money of yours in charity, why don't you found a Day Nursery for the Children of Philanthropists--a place where advanced men and women can leave their offspring in capable hands when they're busied with Mothers' Meetings and Educational Conferences? It would do a thousand times more good, I can tell you, than that fresh kindergarten scheme of yours for teaching the children of the labouring classes to make a new sort of mud-pie."
"You don't understand these things, attractive," Margaret gently pointed out. "You aren't in harmony with the trend of modern thought."
"No, thank God!" said the Colonel, heartily.
Ensued a silence during which he chipped at his egg-shell in an absent-minded fashion.
"That fellow Kennaston said anything to you yet?" he presently queried.
"I--I don't understand," she protested--oh, perfectly unconvincingly. The tea-making, too, engrossed her at this point to an utterly improbable extent.
Thus it shortly befell that the Colonel, still regarding her under intent brows, cleared his throat and made bold to question her generosity in the matter of sugar; five lumps being, as he suggested, a rather unusual allowance for one cup.
Then, "Mr. Kennaston and I are very good friends," said she, with dignity. And having spoiled the first cup in the making, she began on another.