"Oh, I am very bad at dates," said Miss Wilson. "But they are all in order. You will have no difficulty."
Mrs. Clinton looked at her in mild surprise. "Surely you remember the number of years you were with each family," she said.
"Oh, I dare say I can remember that," she said, with a rather nervous laugh. "I was with Mrs. Waterhouse about three years, Mrs. Simkinson one and a half, I think it was."
"That is all I wanted to know," said Mrs. Clinton, but Lady Birkett asked, "Are those three all the posts you have filled?"
Miss Wilson, who was still standing, drew herself up stiffly. "I was with some other people for about a year," she said. "But they were intensely disagreeable people, and I should be very sorry to have to rely on a testimonial from them. They behaved atrociously to me."
"In what way?" asked Mrs. Clinton.
"I prefer not to say," said Miss Wilson firmly. "I have no wish to talk about those people at all. I only wish to forget them. If you will take up the references I have given you I think you will know everything about me that you have a right to ask, and you will find it thoroughly satisfactory; and anything else I shall be pleased to tell you."
"I think, then, I must ask why you left these people. Were they the last you were with?"
"Yes," said Miss Wilson, "they were; and the whole subject is so painful to me that I must refuse to go into it."
"You will not give me the name, so that I can at least hear their side of the story?"