Читать книгу They Winter Abroad - T. H. White - Страница 4

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Mrs. Skimlit, sitting at dinner, reviewed the company. On her right was an empty single table, on her left the German lady who spoke little English and seemed dull. In front sat the family of Scots with their little hussy dressed in next to nothing, and her poor father looking as worried as usual. His wife was evidently a weak creature to allow such behaviour in her daughter: a weak creature, and no helpmate to her husband, as Mrs. Skimlit had once been. Not that Mr. Skimlit had been much of a husband. Weak Mr. Skimlit: so many failures. He had even failed to keep alive.

Next to the Scottish family, on the one side, sat the Australian couple who had made money and come to England, but were vulgar. Their name was Jones; it was a vulgar name and they were vulgar people. Thank Heaven, thought Mrs. Skimlit, one could choose one’s own friends and refuse to associate beneath oneself. But how few friends there were for an old woman who had done her duty, and been forgotten, for a lonely old woman however Christian. Not that she wanted friends, oh no! and not that she couldn’t have them if she wanted. The fact remained that there were few people left in the world who were worth knowing. They were all vulgar and selfish and wicked and inconsiderate and talked about themselves.

On the other side of the Scottish people sat the Misses Cowfold: a good family mentioned in Burke’s Peerage. They were worth knowing, and appeared to behave in a God-fearing way. Mrs. Skimlit talked to them in the drawing-room after dinner every day: but they were very disagreeable, and so fat. Mrs. Skimlit was thin and beautifully preserved. Why people should become fleshy, unless they indulged in intemperance or laziness or gluttony, she could not understand. Herself, she ate as much as most men, always enjoying her second helping, but remained slim. She looked at her firm pink arms with an expression as near to complacence as was possible in those hard eyes. Her hair was quite white, her lips invisible. She sat straight in her chair. The Misses Cowfold should go for walks.

Against the right-hand wall of the dining-room were three tables. At the first of them sat the four English ladies, maiden ladies, who lived in Devonshire. They seemed of good family also, but insipid, and played cards too much. Whist one could play, except on Sundays, but Bridge was a Gambling Game and probably unacceptable to the Lord. They talked Italian better than Mrs. Skimlit could pretend to do, and were always shewing off.

At the second table sat Miss Albino, alone. Mrs. Skimlit disliked Miss Albino. She was a fat chicken with watery protruding eyes, almost colourless, which looked for all the world as if they might at any moment well out and roll down her cheeks. And yet she seemed to be virtuous and ran the Society for the Protection of Animals. Mrs. Skimlit could not think why she disliked her. She gave it up.

In the corner sat Miss Prune and her mother. Miss Prune, who had protruding teeth, was only nineteen and quite well-mannered: a contrast to the Scottish hussy. Mrs. Skimlit’s heart warmed to Miss Prune if only because she disliked her rival. Perhaps she was inclined to talk about athleticism a little too much, but that was all in the spirit of the times. Shameless little waitresses running races with their breasts shaking under their tunics: fat greasy women swimming the Channel: even decent society ladies, or so-called ladies, playing golf in short skirts and riding astride. That was what women did to-day, instead of staying at home to keep the house clean. Mrs. Skimlit sighed sharply, and turned to the next table.

To see this one she had to look in the looking-glass. Dr. and Mrs. Arnold-Browne sat there. He was a fine man, thought Mrs. Skimlit, and would make a good husband to a Christian woman. He stood none of this modern nonsense about Art, and laid down his own opinion as good men ought to do. Mrs. Skimlit noticed his strong hairy hands, square face, and yellow hair appreciatively. It was a pity that Mrs. Arnold-Browne was such a failure.

In other parts of the room, seen either directly or through the looking-glass, sat Mr. McInvert, poor fellow, who wandered about looking for birds and flowers; the professor, who was writing a book; and various stray guests who would be gone to-morrow. But not before Mrs. Skimlit had descended upon them and sucked them dry. It was Mrs. Skimlit’s habit to catch all newcomers the moment they arrived and to find out their names, occupations, ideals, religion, and social status. Few people seemed to talk to her willingly, and the opportunity of talking with the unwary was not to be overlooked. Her isolation had driven her into curiosity.

As she settled down to another evening of boredom with the German lady, the soup having already been cleared away, the door opened and Mr. Pupillary walked with contemptuous dignity down the aisle. This was his first meal in the hotel. He was shewn by the waiter into the empty seat next Mrs. Skimlit. Whilst he took his soup she studied him askance.

Mr. Pupillary, in the meantime, insolently observed his surroundings. On his right, at the middle one of three tables, sat a fat lady with bulging eyes. He quoted to himself, pleased to feel academic:

Two weeping baths, two fiery motions,

Portable and compendious oceans.

After this he felt satisfied. Now one realised how Crashaw’s ‘Mary Magdalen’ looked.

At another table sat a black-haired girl, under twenty, whose teeth stuck out. The rest of her face was pretty, and she probably had a sweet nature. She smiled. ‘Papa, Potatoes, Prunes and Prisms.’ Mr. Pupillary turned away, a little depressed, but equally satisfied with the quotation.

In front of him was another back, almost bare, over a green evening-dress. Over all was the back of a round head, bobbing up and down in the brightest animation. Mr. Pupillary felt that he might get on well with this head, or at any rate as well as he ever got on with women. The soup was excellent. Next to him sat an elderly lady with snow-white hair and a skin clearer than the girl’s. Their eyes met.

‘Good evening,’ said Mrs. Skimlit. ‘Have you just come?’ She spoke like a mouse-trap, with a clear enunciation of every syllable and a close truncation of every word.

Mr. Pupillary felt like a new boy being interrogated by one of the bullies at his preparatory school. The sensation was doubly unpleasant, since the experience had been recent.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Pupillary. ‘I’ve just come.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Skimlit. ‘What is your name?’

‘Pupillary.’

‘I am Mrs. Skimlit. Have you been to Positano before?’

‘No.’

This was one up to Mrs. Skimlit. She had been here before and was ready to press home her advantage. After all, this might be the merest tyro, on his first visit to Italy, who could not even say ‘Good morning’ in the native language. Although this was about the extent of Mrs. Skimlit’s vocabulary, she already began to feel superior. She added graciously: ‘It is a beautiful country. Such pretty walks and scenery. You must go to Amalfi and Capri and Salerno and Sorrento and Paestum. Have you been to Paestum?’

‘I have never been south of Amalfi,’ said Mr. Pupillary, much annoyed. People of his age had surely reached the stage when they need not be condescended to by second-rate winter trippers, however venerable. It hurt him very much to admit that he had not been to Paestum.

‘Perhaps you have not been to Italy before,’ said Mrs. Skimlit, with evident gratification. She had been to Italy and to France, and had once passed through Munich.

‘Never,’ said Mr. Pupillary, who had spent some time in that country. He possessed indulgent parents, and had been reading modern languages at the University. But he had now been sufficiently angered by the old lady’s tone, and humiliated by her subject (he prided himself on his Italian), to wish that she might make a fool of herself.

‘Do you speak French?’

‘Very little.’ It was vindictive, but Mr. Pupillary had been injured in his pride.

Mrs. Skimlit had a certain amount of evidence: the boy was evidently a fool and had never travelled, he had never been to Italy before and therefore presumably could not speak Italian, nor could he speak French. Mrs. Skimlit now felt safe in giving an exhibition of her culture.

‘Garçong,’ she addressed the waiter in her precise tones. ‘Je vieux de vino. Vin bianco.’

‘Yes, madam,’ said the waiter, ‘which kind?’

‘Oh, the same. La même.’ Effectually she did not want the same, but she could not remember the name of any other. Besides, she wished to impress her companion with her fluency, and, not being able to ask what kinds there were, felt that it was best to get her conversation over quickly.

‘It is an easy language to speak,’ she added, turning to Mr. Pupillary, ‘once you have been here some time.’

‘So I should imagine,’ said Mr. Pupillary.

‘Where were you born?’ asked Mrs. Skimlit, changing the subject.

‘In China,’ replied Mr. Pupillary, reflecting impiously that this woman ought to teach the Catechism.

‘It must be a beautiful country. I have never been there, but love the East.’ She implied that Borneo was her footstool—she had, however, happened to miss China. There was a silence. Why didn’t he ask where she had been born? Nobody was interested in anything but themselves. Finally, ‘I was born in Ireland,’ said Mrs. Skimlit.

‘Oh yes?’—The black-hearted Irish.

‘In Dublin.’

‘Oh yes? Dublin must be a fine town.’ Was one expected to go on talking like this every meal for a month?

‘Yes, it is a fine town. Such a pity about the Law Courts.’

‘I am afraid I don’t know Dublin.’

Why did he say it in that tone of voice? And why did he keep saying ‘Oh yes’? A thoroughly disagreeable young man, and probably a good-for-nothing.

‘Do you speak any language besides English?’

‘Yes, I speak Spanish,’ replied Mr. Pupillary in stilted tones; ‘a very rich language, well provided with oaths.’ Why should he want to shock her?

‘Really,’ said Mrs. Skimlit. No doubt he swore disgustingly.

‘Yes,’ continued Mr. Pupillary, ‘mostly connected with the Deity. Only you must be careful how you use them. Now,’ fascinatingly, ‘if you should ever want to be swearing in Spain, I should advise a compromise. Miserable Pig is an exclamation which will give offence to none, whereas if you should happen to use the more direct adjuration before a believing Catholic—“Pig God” of course—you might find yourself with a black eye.’ He smiled at the picture. ‘I find it rather odd to chance my luck. At the same time, one feels that this simple, almost homely, liaison with the Almighty—which permits one to frankly express one’s disapproval in terms of the farmyard—is one of the best flowers of unsophisticated faith. One has to believe in God, and believe him to be very near before one can call him a pig with any hope of shaming him into righteousness.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Skimlit. So he was an atheist and tried to be clever, did he? ‘Do you ever go to church?’

‘Why not?’ said Mr. Pupillary.

‘I believe in God, you see,’ replied Mrs. Skimlit crushingly.

‘Oh yes.’

Mr. Pupillary at last felt ashamed of himself. One did not bait old ladies who were nearing their seventies merely because they held opposing beliefs. This Mrs. Skimlit was probably impressionable in 1870 and fast set before King Edward. She was evidently alone, in a strange country, and in a no less strange society. It was obvious that if she behaved to the other people in the hotel in the same way as she behaved to him, few would willingly associate with her. One came to Italy for diversion, not to discuss the new Prayer Book. Mr. Pupillary knew that the most deadly torture for a social animal was isolation. It did not matter that Mrs. Skimlit had brought it upon herself, indeed she had probably been unable to help it—one could not escape one’s upbringing. Irish Protestantism in 1870, oh Lord!

Mr. Pupillary saw a sentimental picture, in the manner of Hodgson’s Bull, of an old snake which would not admit that it was old, lying in a new world of lizards and newts. The latter were kindly creatures, but not fond of the society of vipers. And the old snake was mateless and shunned, its intelligence still bounded by the perceptions of its kind, bitter and narrow but unbroken. Mrs. Skimlit did not understand, or understood in a different way; it was not his place to hurt her.

He said: ‘Do you often come to Italy?’

Mrs. Skimlit did not reply. She pretended to be talking to the German lady who kept saying ‘Please?’ in an anxious voice.

That was a smack in the face for one’s attempt to be philanthropical. The newt had endeavoured to fraternise with the viper, had been ready to listen whilst the viper shewed off about its travels, but vipers are not mollified by the clumsy kindnesses of the lower species. It was to be expected, Mr. Pupillary told himself self-consciously. These meltings of the heart in the Tolstoy manner never came off. Even with lovers, first one would love and the other be proud, then the first sulk and the second melt. The milk of human kindness was not apt to coincide in its discharges.

He finished his dolci and began again.

‘Paestum would be a good place to go to, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Greek temples, are there not?’

‘Three.’

‘Like Stonehenge?’

‘I have never been to Stonehenge.’

‘Barbed wire, I mean, and pay at the gate?’

Mrs. Skimlit could never for long resist giving information.

‘No, there is no barbed wire, but you have to pay four lire to get in. The temples are very beautiful, the Golden Temple especially,’ she said it in capital letters, ‘with a yellow kind of stone: I believe it is called the Temple of Neptune. It is very difficult to get there, and one usually has to pay the proprietor six hundred lire for a motor-car. But then it is cheaper if you go in a party.’

Just as things were going nicely towards a reconciliation, Mr. Pupillary made a mistake. When he had originally denied a knowledge of foreign languages, or implied a denial, he had intended to humiliate Mrs. Skimlit by an exhibition of his fluency later on. Now that he had recovered from the humiliation of being condescended to, now that he no longer wished to do Mrs. Skimlit any injury, he forgot the denial. Mr. Pupillary asked the waiter for tangerines in passable Italian.

Mrs. Skimlit experienced the voiding of the nether stomach which goes with a recognition of irrevocable self-betrayal. She knew that her knowledge of languages was lamentable and her accent atrocious. So this impertinent young good-for-nothing had been leading her on, laughing at her up his sleeve. She saw the vistas behind her, peaked with bloomers which grew vaster every moment, over which she had been led. Anxiously she counted them. She could not remember. They were terrible, that was all she knew, and probably much more numerous and expensive than she suspected. Well, that was the end of this acquaintanceship.

To all intents and purposes the two never spoke again. At the next meal Mr. Pupillary said ‘Good morning,’ but received no reply, and two weeks later Mrs. Skimlit had occasion to get at him through the German lady. When the waiters brought the plates round the rotation of tables they usually came to Mr. Pupillary first. He took a good plateful. Mrs. Skimlit noticed this, she was greedy herself, and leaning across to Frau Kunst after her own helping, remarked in a loud, sugary voice: ‘Won’t you have some more? I don’t take everything that is on the plate—like some people do.’ This was the sum total of their intercourse.

Pupillary was a cad, of course, but he had so lately been an undergraduate.

❆

In the smoking-room there were already two bridge tables and a group in the arm-chairs round the fire. Anne Menzies, the Scottish hussy, was shocking her father and mother and entertaining Mr. McInvert and the professor. She was not really a hussy, except through the spectacles of 1870, and she did not really shock her parents. Her father was an elder of his church. But the Free Church of Scotland is not, as we choose in England humorously to suppose, entirely dressed in crape, black gloves, and an umbrella. Nor has it a bottle of whisky in its tail-coat. Mr. Menzies would, no doubt, have referred to his maker as the Almighty, had the conversation been directed towards that subject, and he would probably have defined him as a God of Love. However, he did not wantonly choose this topic for all, or indeed voluntarily any, of his conversations. Nor was he a teetotaller, and if he refused to play cards on Sunday it was for the simple reason that he did not know how to play them. He was, however, a man naturally given to worry. Whilst in Italy, whither he had been dragged by his family, he displayed a more than ever dissatisfied air. He hated to be away from his business, he loved his home, he distrusted foreigners. Their food did not agree with him, and he never knew in a hotel exactly where he stood. This dissatisfaction, combined with the mild disapproval which he felt bound to shew when his daughter took the name of the Lord her God in vain (her sins went no further), had provoked the misplaced sympathy which Mrs. Skimlit extended to him as the father of a hussy. He loved his daughter dearly, worshipped her when she played the piano, and worried about her incessantly, not because she was a nuisance, but because she was the brightest jewel in his crown.

In Mrs. Menzies he had the ideal wife. She believed that God was love without being remotely affected by the fact that this sort of love entailed crucifixions and eternal torments. If Mr. Bernard Shaw had pressed her she would gladly have shewn him that she never really believed in hell, but she would have pointed out to him, without making the quotation, that she had rather believe all the legends of the Koran and the Talmud than that this universal frame was without a mind. She would have added that our clear duty was to love one another because there was such a lot of unhappiness in the world, wasn’t there, and that when we died we should go to heaven because God loved us. She had not the faculty of logic and was therefore not impressed by it. She succeeded in deeply respecting and at the same time treating her husband as a child. She loved him both as a mother and as a wife. She condoned her daughter’s misdemeanours, which were never in the least serious, and concealed them from her husband. She was the ally of each against the other. When her daughter said ‘Good God!’ she said ‘Hush!’ and when her husband disapproved, she said, ‘It’s all right, dear, it’s only a phase. She’s only a baby.’ A slim, sprightly, white-haired mother, with nothing unbearably maternal about her, she contrived to make people love her because she seemed to love everybody. She maintained that she was happy.

Husband and wife were sitting in arm-chairs before the fire at the west end of the smoking-room. Mr. Menzies was feeling rather gloomy about his pipe, because English tobacco was so expensive and Italian so dry. Anne sat between them perched on the arm of a chair.

Mr. Jones, the Australian, who was dummy at one of the bridge tables, watched her appreciatively. She was a pretty little lass. Mr. Jones always said Lass or Laddie. He had heard from his wife, who had in turn been confided in by Mrs. Menzies, that her life was a little tragic.

Two years ago she had been engaged to be married to some artistic bounder whom she had loved very much. But their tempers had been too strong for one another, or perhaps their characters too powerful, for one could hardly imagine Anne in a bad temper, and the match had been called off by mutual consent. Mr. Jones gathered that the fiancé had been most to blame and that Anne had still continued to love him. Mr. Jones felt the impression that the poor child had decided to drown her troubles in a life of frivolity, and had vowed never again to think seriously about anything. This explained her penchant for dresses, for ragging on the piano, when she could play Brahms beautifully, and for general effervescence. Whenever she gave a whoop of joy, which she did very frequently and indeed very convincingly, he felt a small pang, because it only covered a broken heart. The charitable quality of Mr. Jones’ own heart, which never classed anybody outside the categories of ‘good’ or ‘poor’—every girl to him was either a good little lass or a poor little lass—forbade him to believe that she might perhaps have forgotten her lover. This, however, she had done, and sat on the arm of her mother’s chair, a small blonde with skin like ivory, and hair spread like an aureole, entertaining the company.

Mr. Pupillary had already been classed by Mr. Jones as a good-looking laddie and by Mrs. Jones as an artist. Artists were so common in that peninsula, and Mr. Pupillary certainly had a wild appearance. He had by now entered the smoking-room, and, over the question of chairs, fallen into conversation with Anne. They appeared to be getting on well together. Mr. Jones remarked to himself, as he did whenever he saw anything approaching youth, that they made a pretty picture. Mr. Pupillary was sitting on the floor, with a cushion provided by Anne from her mother’s chair, while Anne looked down from her perch. They were discussing theatres, which Mr. Pupillary had concluded to be her subject, and, naturally, travel. Mr. Pupillary, who liked to think he had travelled a good deal in Europe, was shewing off. He did it with delicacy, so that possibly Anne did not detect it; but possibly she did. It is impossible to say exactly how far women see through men. The arrival of a new guest at the Hotel Santo Biagio, since all the guests knew each other, and stayed by weeks rather than days, always occasioned a certain amount of speculation. In the smoking-room Anne was ready to receive the newcomer, since she had a charitable heart, at whatever face value he chose to present to her. The professor cautiously reserved his judgment. Mr. McInvert rather thought that Mr. Pupillary was a pathic, Mrs. Menzies regarded him as a nice boy, but felt the jealousy, instantly repressed, common to mothers whose offspring are of marriageable age. The four English maiden ladies from Devonshire, who were among those playing bridge, thought that he was affected, and Mr. Menzies, who was interested in hymns, although suspecting him as he suspected most of the younger generation, noted that he had a speaking voice. On the whole, therefore, the opinion of the smoking-room, though non-committal, was inclined to be favourable.

❆

On the night of Mr. Pupillary’s arrival, the Drawing Room tribunal was assembled as usual over its knitting.

For some reason no stranger suddenly ushered into the room could possibly have mistaken it for a smoking-room. Bridge was played there occasionally, yes, but played round a large writing-table with a cloth on it. There was no small green baize, and the impression was decidedly that of a game of Old Maid. There was never more than one man in the room at once. The hotel album, although it was not bound in red plush, seemed certain to contain a selection of nude babies photographed on astrakhan rugs. It was always in the centre of the table.

Frau Kunst, who ought to have been of the Smoking Room schism, sat reading on the sofa and agreed with everybody. She was kindly and not in the least vindictive. But, with the ideas of her race and period, she considered that drawing-rooms were for ladies and smoking-rooms for men. She therefore remained among what the professor called the poison-pussies, and, with her high grey alpaca dresses, she lent a very successful atmosphere to the party.

Miss Albino sat next to her, looking at photographs. The photographs were shewn to her by Miss Prune, who had taken them. Miss Prune handed one by one with maidenly modesty. Miss Prune’s mother, who was as kindly as Frau Kunst, and equally popular with the Smoking Room—for the distinctions between factions are not so strong in life as it is occasionally necessary to draw them in literature—sat knitting before the fire. She crocheted, and gave away, small woollen flowers.

Dr. Thomas Arnold-Browne was seated on the other side of Miss Prune. His wife was playing bridge in the smoking-room, but he preferred to talk to Miss Prune. In fact, he was slightly in love with her. He always was in love with young and innocent girls. He held himself to be, and rejoiced in being recognised as, the typical product of the fine old British Public School System. At any moment of the day, fingering his Hawks tie with a hairy hand, he might have been heard to pronounce, ‘As for your Classical Music and High Art, and all that stuff, give me an honest cinema every time. Personally, I always think, though of course I know nothing about it, being a mere ordinary man, that people who say they like Bach and Old Masters and all that sort of thing must be a bit cracked, if it isn’t a pose.’ He was fond of talking about his journeys round the world and of elaborating his condemnation of anything that was not inculcated in the Public School. Thus he considered Anne Menzies a ‘damn fine-looking filly,’ but he was not at home with her because she would not listen to his opinion as if it were final. Miss Prune, on the other hand, who had been cut to the same sort of Procrustean bed, or rather had fitted it exactly, made an excellent and sympathetic companion. She had played hockey for her ladies’ college and fully understood the value of playing for a side: the side of God and the British Public Schools. She was aware that the doctor’s views on religion, like most medicos, were probably a little lax; but this was forgivable, and indeed even to be condoned in a man for whom Kipling might have written ‘If.’ She liked him because he was manly and took notice of her. She was ready to acquiesce in most of his pronouncements and receive his advice about photography. Although she played the piano quite efficiently, she was even ready to believe that Classical Music was inessential; that she liked it, as she did, mainly because she was a woman. Some people loathed Miss Prune even more than they loathed Mrs. Skimlit, because she was essentially ‘good,’ ‘innocent,’ and ‘girlish’ in the quite arbitrary sense of these words which is accorded to them by the bed of Procrustes. They loathed her because she had been brought up, and was now unshakably, obstinately imbedded in the foundation of an illogical definition of what was good and what was not. Her glib and unalterable generalisation about Right, combined with her protruding teeth, caused Mr. Pupillary’s aesthetic mind to shudder.

The Misses Cowfold, their immense bulk and pasty complexions looming from two chairs in front of the fire, were reading novels with inattention. Mrs. Skimlit, the doyen of the party, was sitting bolt upright in the largest arm-chair before the blaze. She was greedy of food, avaricious of newspapers, and covetous of comfortable chairs. When she failed to secure the chair in which she was sitting, she considered that her age had been discourteously slighted, and sulked for most of the evening.

Mrs. Prune said, looking up from her knitting:

‘I see we have a new arrival.’

‘Who is that?’ asked the fatter Miss Cowfold, who seldom saw anything.

‘The young man with curly hair who came to-day.’

‘Is he an artist?’ inquired Miss Prune.

‘Probably thinks he is.’

‘One of these Modern Young Men.’

‘Did you notice how he wore his tie?’

‘So extraordinary.’

‘Rather conceited, I should think.’

‘Still, did you not think he was good-looking?’

‘Do you think so? I thought he was too pretty.’

‘You were talking to him, Mrs. Skimlit,’ said Miss Albino, leaning forward ingratiatingly. ‘What was he like?’

In a short silence Mrs. Skimlit accumulated venom.

‘He is an atheist,’ she replied. Her mouth snapped to like a spectacle case.

This created some stir. ‘Really!’ exclaimed Miss Albino. ‘What did he say?’

‘He used foul words about our Lord.’

? ? ?

‘Pig God!’ added Mrs. Skimlit.

‘Why?’ asked Mrs. Prune.

‘I do not know why.’ Why did the woman ask why? Surely it was bad enough in any circumstance. ‘He was extremely disagreeable, most disrespectful, and told lies.’

‘You don’t seem to have got on very well with him,’ remarked Dr. Arnold-Browne heartily. Everybody laughed at this joke.

‘No. One does not get on very well with that sort of person.’

All present wondered if they might be classified by Mrs. Skimlit as that sort of person. She had a faculty, in rebuking sin, for making all her hearers find it in their hearts.

‘Doesn’t seem a very nice fellow to know!’ laughed Dr. Arnold-Browne.

‘Please?’ asked Frau Kunst, who had not understood the conversation, but believed herself to have been addressed.

‘The young man who came to-day,’ shouted the doctor, on the principle that foreigners were the same as deaf people.

‘Ah so! A friend for Miss Prune. The young people.’

‘I hope he will not pester Elizabeth with his attentions,’ remarked Mrs. Skimlit.

‘Perhaps he isn’t as black as you have painted him,’ said Miss Prune forgivingly, with Christian spirit; ‘perhaps he did not really mean to swear.’

‘Perhaps you misunderstood him?’ asked the small hope in her mother’s heart. She would have been glad of a nice young man to amuse Elizabeth.

‘I understood him perfectly,’ stated Mrs. Skimlit, ‘and I should strongly advise nobody to have anything to do with him.’

‘Well, we can’t condemn people without speaking to them, or hearing their own defence, can we?’ Miss Prune pointed out.

The almost unbearable fact about Miss Prune was that she really had no desire to make Mr. Pupillary’s acquaintance, had in fact definitely disliked him when he looked away at dinner; and yet she insisted on acting with the highest principles.