"All right," said Toby, taken off his guard.
"Hurrah! that you will instantly get a profession of some sort. Dear Toby, how nice of you! There's the gong, and I'm simply ravenous."
Toby got up rather stiffly.
"If you consider that fair," he remarked, "I wonder at you. At least, I don't wonder, for it's extraordinary how little sense of honour women have."
"I know. Isn't it terrible?" said Lily. "Toby, it was nice of you to order that crab. I adore crab. Oh, there's mamma! I suppose she must have crossed last night. I didn't expect her till this evening."
Mrs. Murchison had been to the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, and was very communicative and astounding about it. She began by saying how delicious it had been at Beyrout, and Lily, whose real and tender affection for her mother did not blunt her sense of humour, began to giggle helplessly.
"Bayreuth, I should say," continued Mrs. Murchison without a pause. "Lily dearest, if you laugh like that you'll get a piece of crab in your windgall. Well, as I was saying, Lady Conybeare, it was all just too beautiful. You may be sure I studied the music a good deal before each opera; it is impossible to grasp it otherwise—the life-motive and all that. Siegfried Wagner conducted; they gave him quite an ovarium. But some people go just in order to say they have been, without thinking about the music. Garibaldi to the general, I call it."
Lady Conybeare, a fresh-faced, dark-eyed woman of not more than fifty, healthy as a sea-wind, and in her wholesome way as tyrannical, cast an appealing look at Toby. Toby was one of the few people who did not in the least fear her, and she was proportionately grateful. She had tried to spoil him as a child, and now depended on him. He had warned her what calls would be made on her gravity during Mrs. Murchison's visit, and she had promised to do her best.
"So few people appreciate Garibaldi," she said with emphatic sympathy.
"Yes it is so," said Mrs. Murchison, flying off at a tangent. "When I was a girl I used to adore him, and wore a photograph of him in a locket. But that is all gone out; it went out with plain living and high thinking;" and she helped herself for the second time to Toby's crab and drank a little excellent Moselle.