“Yes,” she was saying, “Luke has failed to pass off the Britannia. It is a rare occurrence. I suppose the boy is a fool.”
Mrs. Harrington was rather addicted to the practice of calling other people names. If the butler made a mistake she dubbed him an idiot at once. She did not actually call her present companion, Mrs. Ingham-Baker, a fool, possibly because she considered the fact too apparent to require note.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing, smoothed out the piece of silken needlework with which she moved through life, and glanced at her companion. She wanted to say the right thing. And Mrs. Harrington was what the French call “difficult.” One could never tell what the right thing might be. The art of saying it is, moreover, like an ear for music, it is not to be acquired. And Mrs. Ingham-Baker had not been gifted thus.
“And yet,” she said, “their father was a clever man--as I have been told.”
“By whom?” inquired Mrs. Harrington blandly.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker paused in distress.
“I wonder who it was,” she pretended to reflect.
“So do I,” snapped Mrs. Harrington.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker’s imagination was a somewhat ponderous affair, and, when she trusted to it, it usually ran her violently down a steep place. She concluded to say nothing more about the late Admiral FitzHenry.
“The boy,” said Mrs. Harrington, returning to the hapless Luke, “has had every advantage. I suppose he will try to explain matters when he comes. I could explain it in one word - stupidity.”