I tried to consider seriously the problem of the consumption of possible step-children; it was too difficult for me.
"I quite hoped to make it pay," she continued—"keeping prize pigs, I mean; we are so frightfully poor. But I am away so much I fear it does not do very well. You play bridge, of course?"
This did not seem to have much to do with the pigs.
"No, I do not play."
"You don't play bridge? How on earth do you get through the day?"
"I really do not know."
"Oh, you must learn at once. I can give you the address of a woman in London who goes out for five pounds an afternoon and who would teach you in three or four lessons. It does seem funny, your not playing."
I said "Yes."
She did not appear to want many answers from me after this, but prattled on about people and the world in general, and before half an hour was over I was left with the impression that society is chiefly composed of people living upon an agreeable and amusing ground somewhere at the borderland of the divorce court.
"So tiresome of the husbands!" she concluded. "Before the war they used to be the most docile creatures; as long as they got a percentage, and the wives did not worry at their own little affairs, all went smoothly. Now, since going out there and fighting, they have come back giving themselves great airs, and talking about wounded honor, and ridiculous things of that sort that one reads of in early Victorian books. One does not know where it will end."