“You would if you saw him. But perhaps she would divorce him. He’s got whiskers.”
“Lor! Why did she ever marry him, then? Or perhaps he grew them afterwards!”
“No, he’s the sort of person who always had whiskers. Do promise me that you will never grow whiskers, darling. They seem to damn the soul, don’t they! I should turn in my grave if I thought you were growing whiskers. So if by chance, when I am quite dead, you want to grow whiskers, mind you dig me up with an order from the Secretary for Cemeteries, whoever it is, and you’ll find me lying on my face, and—and a trace of mineral poison in my lungs.”
“Why that?” asked Robin.
“Just to make it more exciting. I was only adding detail to a bald narrative. Isn’t there anybody else besides Mrs. Lockwater? Surely there was somebody last Easter.”
Robin laughed.
“Yes, there was,” he said. “There was a girl in Tiddlewinks.”
“What are they? How do you get there?”
“It’s a revue, mother. I had forgotten all about it till you suggested it. She sang ‘Oysters on the Pier.’ You never saw anybody so fetching.”
“Oh, but she mustn’t fetch you. I don’t think I should like her as a daughter-in-law. Or are oysters ‘off’ now, since it is June?”