"I wish," she said at last almost wistfully--"I wish that I could understand it all. I seem to be all mixed up. You don't suppose I want to be here, do you?"
But Tish was not in a mood to make concessions. "As for what you want," she said, "how are we to know that? You are here, aren't you?--here as a result of your own cold-heartedness. Had you remained true to the very estimable young man you jilted you would not now be in this position."
"Of course he would talk about it!" said the girl darkly.
"I am convinced," Tish went on, dexterously turning a pancake by a swift movement of the pan, "that sensational movies are responsible for much that is wrong with the country to-day. They set false standards. Perfectly pure-minded people see them and are filled with thoughts of crime."
Although she had ignored him steadily, the girl turned now to Mr. Oliver.
"They don't believe anything I tell them. Why don't you explain?" she demanded.
"Explain!" he said in a furious voice. "Explain to three lunatics? What's the use?"
"You got me into this, you know."
"I did! I like that! What in the name of Heaven induced you to ride off the way you did?"
Tish paused, with the frying-pan in the air. "Silence!" she commanded. "You are both only reaping what you have sowed. As far as quarreling goes, you can keep that until you are married, if you intend to be. I don't know but I'd advise it. It's a pity to spoil two houses."
But the girl said that she wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on earth, and he fell back to sulking again.
As Aggie observed later, he acted as if he had never cared for her, while Mr. Bell, on the contrary, could not help his face changing when he so much as mentioned her name.
We made some tea and ate a hearty breakfast, while the men watched us. And as we ate, Tish held the moving-picture business up to contumely and scorn.
"Lady," said one of the prostrate men, "aren't you going to give us anything to eat?"
"People," Tish said, ignoring him, "who would ordinarily cringe at the sight of a wounded beetle sit through bloody murders and go home with the obsession of crime."
"I hope you won't take it amiss," said the man again, "if I say that, seeing it's our flour and bacon, you either ought to feed us or take it away and eat it where we can't see you."
"I take it," said Tish to the girl, pouring in more batter, "that you yourself would never have thought of highway robbery had you not been led to it by an overstimulated imagination."