Traill went—obedient. They heard him taking the stairs two at a time in the darkness. Then the door slammed.
"One of these days he'll break his neck down those stairs," said Mrs. Durlacher. "Do you live in Town, Miss Bishop?"
She ran one sentence into the other inconsequently, as if they had connection.
"Well—not exactly," said Sally. "I live in Kew."
"Oh yes—Kew—it's a very pretty place. There are some delightful old houses on the Green—the gardens side—I believe they're King's property, aren't they?"
"I know the ones you mean," said Sally; "they are very nice, but I don't live there." She added that with a smile—a generous admission that she made no pretension to what she was not. Upon Mrs. Durlacher it was wasted, as was all generosity. She had not the quality herself; understood it as little as she possessed it.
"Oh, I wasn't supposing that," she replied easily. "I was thinking that that was the only part of Kew I had noticed. I think I've only been there once or twice at the most. Have you known my brother long?"
Sally's fingers gripped tight about her little parcel. "Oh no, not so very long."
"He's a quaint, int'resting sort of person. Don't you find him so?"
To Sally, this description sounded ludicrous. The fashionable way of putting things was utterly unknown to her. To think of Traill as quaint, in the sense of the word as she understood it, seemed preposterous. She could not realize that the Society idea of quaintness is anything which does not passably imitate or become one of itself.