... strove my hardest to do no more than smile appreciation. My laugh compelled Mrs. Poppleton to stare at me—oh, her eyes I Thereupon, her husband began his dread performance. The patience, the heroic patience, of that dear, good fellow! I have known him explain, and re-explain, for a quarter of an hour, and invariably without success. It might be a mere pun; Mrs. Poppleton no more understood the nature of a pun than of the binomial theorem. But worse was when the jest involved some allusion. When I heard Poppleton begin to elucidate, ... — The Odd Women • George Gissing
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