“I suppose it is.”
After a pause Dolly might say, thoughtfully, “I suppose so,” and after that they would walk on in silence, both slightly swinging their arms as they went.
Their conversation with Mrs. Fazackerly was afterward repeated to Claire by Aileen Kendal.
They found her with her head tied up in a becoming purple-and-white-check handkerchief and wearing a purple-and-white-check cotton frock with short sleeves, turning out her spare room.
She does a great deal of her own housework, and always does it very well.
“You’ve got on a very smart frock,” said Aileen, whose tone is always disparaging, not from any ill will, but because it is the Kendal habit to make personal remarks and to give them a disparaging inflection.
Mrs. Fazackerly, who is used to this, said that she had made the frock herself, and it washed well, and wouldn’t they sit down.
“Thanks. Mumma wanted to know when your paying guest is coming and if you’d like to bring him up to play tennis one afternoon, and if so, when?”
Thus, untroubled by subtleties of diplomacy, did Miss Kendal accomplish her mission.
Nancy, with equal straightforwardness, selected a date about a week after Captain Patch’s expected arrival, and at once wrote the engagement down in a little book.