Concha would have liked very much to have gone; first, because it seemed a pity to have incurred for nothing Teresa’s stare and the Doña’s raised eyebrows; second, because she had been finding it uphill work to keep Arnold civil, and David in the conversation. But her childhood’s habit of docility to Arnold had become automatic, so she sat on in the loggia.
“I think, maybe, I’ll go and try my hand ... they seem nice wee kiddies,” said David, and he got up, in his slow, deliberate way, and strolled off towards the party on the lawn.
“Kiddies!” exclaimed Arnold in a voice of disgust, when he was out of ear-shot. “The Scotch always seem to use the wrong slang.”
“You’re getting as fussy as Teresa,” laughed Concha.
“Oh, if it comes to that, she needn’t think she’s the only person with a sense of language. What’s the matter with her? Each time I come down she seems more damned superior. Who does she think she is? She’s reached the point of being dumb with superiorness, next she’ll go blind with it, then she’ll die of it,” and, frowning heavily, he began to fill his pipe.
His bitterness against Teresa dated from the days before the War when he used to write poetry. He had once read her some of his poems, and she, being younger and more brutal than she was now, had exclaimed, “But, Arnold, they’re absolutely dead! They’re decomposing with deadness.” He had never forgiven her.
“I suppose she gives you a pretty thin time, doesn’t she? She _does_ hate you!”
Concha blushed. An unexpected trait in Concha was an inordinate vanity—the idea that any one, child, dog, boring old woman, could possibly dislike her was too humiliating to be admitted—and though one part of her was fully aware that she irritated, nay, jarred æsthetically upon Teresa, the other part of her obstinately, angrily, denied it.
“I don’t care if she does ... besides she doesn’t ... really,” she said hotly.
She then chose a cigarette, placed it in a very long amber holder, lit it, and began to smoke it with an air of intense sensuous enjoyment. Concha was still half playing at being grown up, and one of the things about her that irritated Teresa was that she was apt to walk and talk, to pour out tea, and smoke cigarettes, like an English actress in a drawing-room play, never quite losing her “stagyness.”