'And we in the act of discussing Italian literature!' Greatorex held out the little book with an air of comic despair. 'Perhaps you'll tell me that isn't a more savoury topic for a lady.'
'But for the tramp population less conducive to savouriness—don't you think—than baths?' She took the book from him, shutting her handkerchief in the place where his finger had been.
'No, no'—Greatorex, Panama in hand, was shaking his piebald head—'I can't understand this morbid interest in vagrants. You're too—much too—— Leave it to others!'
'What others?'
'Oh, the sort of woman who smells of india-rubber,' he said, with smiling impertinence. 'The typical English spinster. You've seen her. Italy's full of her. She never goes anywhere without a mackintosh and a collapsible bath—rubber. When you look at her it's borne in upon you that she doesn't only smell of rubber. She is rubber, too.'
They all laughed.
'Now you frivolous people go away,' Lady John said. 'We've only got a few minutes to talk over the terms of the late Mr. Barlow's munificence before the carriage comes for Miss Levering.'
In the midst of the general movement to the garden, Mrs. Freddy asked Farnborough did he know she'd got that old horror to give Lady John £8000 for her charity before he died?
'Who got him to?' demanded Greatorex.