“Oh, la! la! Prehistoric! Filthy habit! To-day we keep our skins clean.”
“Do sit down. You are flouncing about like a sylph of twenty. I hope you have not permitted yourself to become seriously interested in this young man.”
Mrs. Winstone dropped into a chair on the other side of the table and looked across the work-basket with airy self-consciousness.
“Why not?”
“You are an old fool, and he must be a young one.”
“Not a bit of it. Level-headed business man. Rich and strenuous.”
“Strenuous?”
“New word. American. Means a short life for yourself and a merry one for your heirs.”
“Be good enough to confine yourself to English. Are you going to marry this youth and make a laughing-stock of yourself and your family?”
“Marry? Oh, how tiresome of you to be so serious. I’d managed him so well! I never thought he would follow me here when I need a rest. But he’s romantic —”