"You haven't told me yet," said Lady Nuttal,
"what it is your fiancé does for a living."
"He's a statistician," replied Lamia, with an
annoying sense of being on the defensive. Lady Nuttal was obviously taken aback.
It had not occurred to her that statisticians entered into normal social relationships.
The species, she would have surmised, was perpetuated in some collateral manner,
like mules.
"But Aunt Sara, it's a very interesting profession,"
said Lamia warmly.
"I don't doubt it," said her aunt, who obviously
doubted it very much. "To express anything important in mere figures is so
plainly impossible that there must be endless scope for well-paid advice on how
to do it. But don't you think that life with a statistician would be rather, shall
we say, humdrum?"
Lamia was silent. She felt reluctant to discuss the surprising
depth of emotional possibility which she had discovered below Edward's numerical
veneer. "It's not the figures themselves," she said finally, "it's
what you do with them that matters."