Mr. Tempest can help being good," she said. "It must be an awful handicap to you both."
"It is," admitted Tempest gravely. "Especially when you're the only one in the bunch."
Slicker chuckled with his mouth full.
"That's one on you, honey," he said. "But we can't help it. Some are born with cold feet, some get cold feet, and some have cold feet thrust u"
"Slicker, if you bring your vulgar jokes over here, I'll lock you up. I know you're in a position to tell us why both acquirements are a handicap, Mrs. Ducane, but"
"Tempest considers each of his good deeds as an asset placed in heavenly securities to act as retainers when the time comes to need an advocate," explained Slicker. "You won't convince him, Jennifer."
"You see, Slicker has tried," said Jennifer. "That is what makes him so contemptuous. We are never really contemptuous of things till we find out that we can't do them. Slicker tried for a month. That was down East, when he thought of going to China for a missionary. He was so affected. I spilt boiling water into both his shoes one day—with his feet in them, and he only said, 'Oh, dear!' Now, he should have said 'damn,' shouldn't he? All white men say 'damn.' Kipling calls it 'the war-drum of the English round the world.’"
"I—I think he expressed it a little differently," suggested Tempest. "But no doubt he meant much the same thing."
"Of course," said Jennifer.
She drew a ragged sock over her hand; held it up to the light, and cocked her head at it.
"When Providence made me your cousin, Slicker," she said, "it neglected to tell me what you were going to do with your clothes. Otherwise I might have declined the honour. This is the seventh pair of holes you have brought me to darn socks on to in one week."
"But you look so sweet when you're doing it, honey." Slicker tipped the tin for the last of the berries. "You make a regular little home-bird twittering in your pretty nest—and I never reckoned there'd be anything but a bonfire made out of this old place in Ducane's time."
