It was spirited, and apparently had to do with a bookmaker, for it involved a "pony" on this and a "pony" on that and a "tenner both ways" on something else. Several sporting papers, one of them The Jockey's Weekly owned by Woolf, lay on the table at her elbow, with "Weatherby's" to keep them company.
Maggy did not sit down as invited. There was something about the woman at the telephone that gave her a mental stimulus, almost put her on the defensive. All her torpidity left her. The other went on speaking into the instrument, interspersing her instructions with slang and stable-talk. She was untidily dressed in clothes of an accentuated sporting cut. Maggy, catching sight of herself in a mirror, twitched her hat straight, turned her back and powdered her nose. Then she stood still, waiting for eventualities.
With an "All right, see you on Thursday. Cheer-O," the woman rang off and swung round in her chair, bestowing on Maggy a hard-eyed scrutiny.
"Don't think I know you, do I?" she asked. "And that half-baked woman of mine didn't announce your name."
"Come to think of it I don't know yours," returned Maggy, instinctively full of a sense of antagonism. "She said something about Mr. Woolf being out and Lady Susan in."
"That's right. My name's Susan.... Have a drink?"
Maggy, flabbergasted, said, "No, thank you." She was puzzling her mind to account for this young woman's presence in Woolf's house when it suddenly occurred to her that there could only be one explanation of it. "You seem to be at home here," she remarked.
"That's rather cool," the other laughed. "I am at home. Who the deuce d'you think I am?"
"I haven't an idea. All I know is, you said your name was Susan, and the maid said you were a lady."
This rather wicked thrust only called forth another laugh, curiously unresentful.