Mabel seemed suddenly to have lost her interest in her exhibits and their cage. She rather hurried Mark through the kitchen premises and, moving into the garden, replied rather abstractedly to his plans for the garden's development.
Suddenly she said, "Mark, I do wish you hadn't said that in the kitchen."
He was mentally examining the possibilities of a makeshift racket court against a corner of the stable and barn. "Eh, what in the kitchen, dear?"
"Mabel, I swear we could fix up a topping sort of squash rackets in that corner. Those cobbles are worn absolutely smooth--"
He caught his arm around her and gave her a playful squeeze. "Sorry, old girl, what was it? About High Jinks and Low Jinks? Ha! Dashed funny that, don't you think?"
"No, I don't. I don't think it's a bit funny."
Her tone was such that, relaxing his arm, he turned and gazed at her. "_Don't_ you? Don't you really?"
Some instinct told him he ought not to laugh, but he could not help it. The idea appealed to him as distinctly and clearly comic. "Well, but it _is_ funny. Don't you see? High Jinks alone is such a funny expression--sort of--well, you know what I mean. Apart altogether from Low Jinks," and he laughed again.
Mabel compressed her lips. "I simply don't. Rebecca is not a bit like High Jinks."
He burst out laughing. "No, I'm dashed if she is. That's just it!"
"Oh, go on, Mabel! Of course you do. You make it funnier. High Jinks and Low Jinks! I shall call them that."
"Mark." She spoke the word severely and paused severely. "Mark. I do most earnestly hope you'll do nothing of the kind."
He stared, puzzled. He had tried to explain the absurd thing, and she simply could not see it. "I simply don't."
And again that vague and transient discomfort shot through him.
Sabre awoke in the course of that night and lay awake. The absurd incident came immediately into his mind and remained in his mind. High Jinks and Low Jinks _was_ comic. No getting over it. Incontestably comic. Stupid, of course, but just the kind of stupid thing that tickled him irresistibly. And she couldn't see it. Absolutely could not see it. But if she were never going to see any of these stupid little things that appealed to him--? And then he wrinkled his brows. "You remember how he used to wrinkle up his old nut," as the garrulous Hapgood had said.