She glanced round the table and rose, saying: "Don't you think we've had polemics enough for one little dinner, Dad?
There's a lovely moon, so we'll have our coffee on the verandah, and you and Mr van Huysman can settle the affairs of the universe comfortably over your pipes.

Give Lord Leighton and Mr Merrill something to smoke, and we will join you when we have got some wraps." When they got back from Nitocris's rooms Mrs van Huysman elected to take her coffee in a big, deep-seated armchair by the drawing-room window.
She said that she had felt the sun a little, and might possibly indulge in forty winks--which she did within a few minutes of getting comfortably arranged in it.

Then Nitocris took Brenda by the arm and walked her half-way down the lawn.
"I want to take possession of Lord Leighton for about half an hour, dear, if you don't mind.

I've got something very serious to say to him.
Dad, with the characteristic cowardice of his sex, has left it to me to say.

It's--well, it's about a mummy: a female mummy, or, at least, I suppose I ought to say a mummy that was once a female--about five thousand years ago." "My dear Niti----" "No, no, don't interrupt me, for goodness' sake.