“Hein? I shall give you Ciccio’s socks, yes? He pushes holes in the toes—you see?” Madame poked two fingers through the hole in the toe of a red-and-black sock, and smiled a little maliciously at Alvina.
“I don’t mind which sock I darn,” she said.
“No? You don’t? Well then, I give you another. But if you like I will speak to him—”
“What to say?” asked Alvina.
“To say that you have so much money, and hope to have more. And that you like him—Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?—hein? Is it so?”
“And then what?” said Alvina.
“That he should tell me if he should like to marry you also—quite simply. What? Yes?”
“No,” said Alvina. “Don’t say anything—not yet.”
“Hé? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see—”
Alvina sat darning the sock and smiling at her own shamelessness. The point that amused her most of all was the fact that she was not by any means sure she wanted to marry him. There was Madame spinning her web like a plump prolific black spider. There was Ciccio, the unrestful fly. And there was herself, who didn’t know in the least what she was doing. There sat two of them, Madame and herself, darning socks in a stuffy little bedroom with a gas fire, as if they had been born to it. And after all, Woodhouse wasn’t fifty miles away.