"Isn't it?"
"I daresay it is."
She adjusted her unwilling part in the sorry dialogue to the level of her companion; lacking both physical energy and moral courage to put an end to it.
"You've got an appalling number of books in this house, haven't you? I always mean to read some day when I've got time, but I've always been too busy. They say it's never too late to mend. Of course in hospital there simply wasn't a hope, and my off-time was always so taken up. Of course we were never allowed to speak to the doctors—far less go out with them—but there was one perfectly mad fellow who used simply to follow me about. Appalling wasn't the word for it. I say, I believe I'm shocking you! Are you shocked? I'd rather you said if you are. I mean really——"
It went on da capo, and Lily was disgusted with herself for her utter inability to silence the elder woman by any of the pungent sentences that she constantly formulated in her own mind, but could never bring herself to utter aloud.
She did not really believe that Doris Dickenson was in the least sensitive, in spite of her touchiness, but the girl's footing in the house as semi-guest, semi-professional attendant, as well as Nicholas Aubray's friendship for her, made it seem extraordinarily difficult to rebuke her self-sufficiency in terms trenchant enough to penetrate her singular obtuseness of mind.
"You get on with her all right, don't you?" said Nicholas, with the simple satisfaction of one stating a fact rather than asking a question.
"Yes," said Lily hesitatingly. The teaching inculcated in her childhood always made it an effort to her to speak the truth, when the truth might possibly distress or disappoint her hearer.
But she added after a moment:
"She does talk rather too much, I think."