"You shouldn't say that, Aunt. After all, we haven't heard enough to judge yet."
"Shut up!" said Paula fiercely. "Don't pay any attention to Stephen, Willoughby! Just go on reading. Now, all of you! You must make your minds receptive, and absorb the atmosphere of the scene: it's tremendously significant. Go on, Willoughby!"
Roydon cleared his throat again. "Nottingham lace curtains shroud the windows, through which there can be obtained a vista of slate-roofs and chimney-stacks. A tawdry doll leans drunkenly on the dressing-table; and a pair of soiled pink corsets are flung across the only armchair." He looked round in a challenging kind of way as he enunciated this, and appeared to wait for comment.
"Ah yes, I see!" said Joseph, with a deprecating glance at the assembled company. "You wish to convey an atmosphere of sordidness."
"Quite, quite!" said Mottisfont, coughing.
"And let us admit freely that you have succeeded," said Stephen cordially.
"I always think there's something frightfully sordid about corsets, don't you?" said Valerie. "Those satin ones, I mean, with millions of bones and laces and things. Of course, nowadays one simply wears an elastic belt, if one wears anything at all, which generally one doesn't."
"You'll come to it, my girl," prophesied Mathilda.
"When I was young," remarked Maud, "no one thought of not wearing corsets. It would have been quite unheard-of."
"You corseted your minds as well as your bodies," interpolated Paula scornfully. "Thank God I live in an untrammelled age!"