"
"Perhaps he doesn't want to marry her."
"He wants to all right, but he's such a wretchedly inefficient beast
that he won't turn to and do it. I've no patience with that sort of
dilly-dallying. I shall go down to-morrow and speak to him about it
again."
"Take care the judge doesn't catch sight of you."
"I don't mind in the least if he does," said Meldon. "That won't
matter. What I have got to take care about is that he doesn't catch
sight of either Miss King or Simpkins. I don't know whether you quite
realise, Major, that as long as that judge is in Ballymoy we are living
on the edge of a volcano. The smallest spark might set the thing off
and cause an alarming explosion."
"Do sparks set off volcanoes?"
"That, I suppose, is the kind of remark that you consider clever. As a
matter of fact, it is simply an evidence of your mental sluggishness.
My thoughts had passed on, by a perfectly natural transition, from
volcanoes to powder magazines, which are things that sparks do set off.
Any one with even a moderate amount of what I may call mental agility
would have followed me without any difficulty, and refrained from
asking your very foolish question.
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