Page:My mortal enemy - 1926.djvu/82

 “Couldn’t you ask them to walk more quietly?” I suggested.

He smiled and shook his head. “We have, but it seems to make them worse. They are that kind of people.”

His wife broke in. “The palavery kind of Southerners; all that slushy gush on the surface, and no sensibilities whatever—a race without consonants and without delicacy. They tramp up there all day long like cattle. The stalled ox would have trod softer. Their energy isn’t worth anything, so they use it up gabbling and running about, beating my brains into a jelly.”

She had scarcely stopped for breath when I heard a telephone ring overhead, then shrieks of laughter, and two people ran across the floor as if they were running a foot-race.

“You hear?” Mrs. Henshawe looked at me triumphantly. “Those two silly old hens race each other to the telephone as if they had a sweetheart at the other end of it. While I could