Pepper, and if she
heard that he had been caught saying "Ha! ha!" she would--she would do
something very dreadful indeed to him. Arthur Venning suggested that
what she must do was to rig up something in the nature of a surprise--a
portrait, for example, of a nice old lady in a lace cap, concealing a
bath of cold water, which at a signal could be sprung on Pepper's head;
or they'd have a chair which shot him twenty feet high directly he sat
on it.
Susan laughed. She had done her tea; she was feeling very well
contented, partly because she had been playing tennis brilliantly, and
then every one was so nice; she was beginning to find it so much easier
to talk, and to hold her own even with quite clever people, for somehow
clever people did not frighten her any more. Even Mr. Hirst, whom she
had disliked when she first met him, really wasn't disagreeable; and,
poor man, he always looked so ill; perhaps he was in love; perhaps he
had been in love with Rachel--she really shouldn't wonder; or perhaps it
was Evelyn--she was of course very attractive to men. Leaning forward,
she went on with the conversation. She said that she thought that the
reason why parties were so dull was mainly because gentlemen will not
dress: even in London, she stated, it struck her very much how people
don't think it necessary to dress in the evening, and of course if they
don't dress in London they won't dress in the country.
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