'You're such a complicated little thing. I shall have to take you seriously in hand and teach you to be natural. I can't have you having all sorts of finicking ideas about not doing this and not doing the other before servants. Servants don't matter. I never consider them.' 'I wish you had considered the poor parlourmaid,' said Lucy, seeing that he was in an unoffended frame of mind. 'Why did you give her such a dreadful scolding?' 'Why? Because she made you jump so. You couldn't have jumped more if you had thought it was a ghost. I won't have your flesh being made to creep.' 'But it crept much worse when I heard the things you said to her.' 'Nonsense. These people have to be kept in order. What did the woman mean by coming in like that?' 'Why, you told her to bring us coffee.' 'But I didn't tell her to make an infernal noise by dropping spoons all over the place.' 'That was because she got just as great a fright when she saw us as I did when I heard her.' 'I don't care what she got. Her business is not to drop things. That's what I pay her for. But look here--don't you go thinking such a lot of tangled-up things and arguing. Do, for goodness sake, try and be simple.' 'I feel _very_ simple,' said Lucy, smiling and putting out her hand to him, for his face was clouding. 'Do you know, Everard, I believe what's the matter with me is that I'm _too_ simple.' Wemyss roared, and forgot how near he was getting to being hurt. 'You simple! You're the most complicated----' 'No I'm not. I've got the untutored mind and uncontrolled emotions of a savage. That's really why I jumped.' 'Lord,' laughed Wemyss, 'listen to her how she talks. Anybody might think she was clever, saying such big long words, if they didn't know she was just her Everard's own little wife. Come here, my little savage--come and sit on your husband's knee and tell him all about it.' He held out his arms, and Lucy got up and went into them and he rocked her and said, 'There, there--was it a little untutored savage then----' But she didn't tell him all about it, first because by now she knew that to tell him all about anything was asking for trouble, and second because he didn't really want to know. Everard, she was beginning to realise with much surprise, preferred not to know. He was not merely incurious as to other people's ideas and opinions, he definitely preferred to be unconscious of them.