“You have changed your robes, Lady,” I said.
“Yes, Humphrey. Bastin gave me pictures of those your women wear.” (On further investigation I found that this referred to an old copy of the Queen newspaper, which, somehow or other, had been brought with the books from the ship.) “I have tried to copy them a little,” she added doubtfully.
“How do you do it? Where do you get the material?” I asked.
“Oh!” she answered with an airy wave of her hand, “I make it—it is there.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, but she only smiled radiantly, offering no further explanation. Then, before I could pursue the subject, she asked me suddenly:
“What has Bickley been saying to you about me?”
I fenced, answering: “I don’t know. Bastin and Bickley talk of little else. You seem to have been a great deal with them while I was ill.”
“Yes, a great deal. They are the nearest to you who were so sick. Is it not so?”
“I don’t know,” I answered again. “In my illness it seemed to me that you were the nearest.”
“About Bastin’s words I can guess,” she went on. “But I ask again—what has Bickley been saying to you about me? Of the first part, let it be; tell me the rest.”