“I can’t think why on earth you ever asked that individual to address us; but I suppose she is some personal friend of yours?”
When the two girls and I were left alone with the general disorder that always prevails after one’s guests have gone, Ursula made some tea, and Virginia brought in what was left of the festal fare, and we sat around the fire and ate in melancholy silence.
“I’m going to town by the very first train to-morrow,” I said at last.
“So ’m I!” fervently ejaculated the other two in unison. “And may I never set eyes or ears on that fruit creature again,” added Virginia, as she set down her plate, with an air of a pain in her chest, after her sixth cucumber sandwich.
But, though I escaped the lady’s next call, I had not got to the end of her. She sent an avalanche of MSS. to my office, and called persistently in person. Howbeit, she never was troubled to walk beyond the inquiry office, and her MSS. were always returned to her with the utmost promptitude.
Some weeks later Virginia and I, after doing some shopping in the stores, turned into the refreshment-room for lunch. I do not know any place where a more varied assortment of feminine idiosyncrasies thrust themselves upon one’s notice than in the ladies’ luncheon-room; neither do I know any place where you can hear, within a given space of time, more particulars of the births, marriages, ailments and deaths—plus a wealth of intervening data—of people you know nothing about, than in that self-same room.
We had hardly taken our seats at a table before we were accompanying our next-door neighbour to a dentist, she being in a state of complete nervous prostration (full symptoms given), and having four teeth extracted (most obstinate one that came out in eleven separate pieces) with gas that wouldn’t “take” (italicised description of what the victim underwent, and was conscious of, in her half-gone condition). After this we dallied through an exceedingly comprehensive catalogue of what she had been able to take in the way of nourishment since the momentous occasion; and finally received, with breathless interest, the important information as to the exact date when she would be once more fully equipped for dinner-parties.
On our right two more were discussing, with gusto, the doings (none of them, apparently, what she ought to have done) of a bride who had recently entered their family.