"Good."
I took a deep breath and began.
"S for sister. I for Isabel—Isabel is the name of the sister. S for another sister—I'll tell you her name directly. T for two sisters, these two that we're talking about. E for Edith, that's the second sister whose name I was going to tell you. R for Rose. Perhaps I ought to explain Rose. She was the sister whom these two sisters were sisters of. Got that?" I turned to Celia. "I'm going to get the sister idea into his head if I die for it."
"Just a moment, sir," said the dazed voice of the porter.
"What's the matter? Didn't I make it clear about Rose? She was the sister whom the—"
"Just hold the line a moment, sir," implored the porter. "Here's the gentleman himself coming in."
I handed the telephone to Celia. "Here he is," I said.
But I was quite sorry to go, for I was getting interested in those sisters. Rose, I think, will always be my favourite. Her life, though short, was full of incident, and there were many things about her which I could have told that porter. But perhaps he would not have appreciated them. It is a hard thing to say of any man, but he appeared to me to be entirely lacking in intellect.
THE OBVIOUS
Celia had been calling on a newly married friend of hers. They had been schoolgirls together; they had looked over the same algebra book (or whatever it was that Celia learnt at school—I have never been quite certain); they had done their calisthenics side by side; they had compared picture post cards of Lewis Waller. Ah, me! the fairy princes they had imagined together in those days … and here am I, and somewhere in the City (I believe he is a stockbroker) is Ermyntrude's husband, and we play our golf on Saturday afternoons, and go to sleep after dinner, and—Well, anyhow, they were both married, and Celia had been calling on Ermyntrude.