"I hear you are writing a book."
That was a false move. Mr. Harper was only able to blush vividly and to make a kind of noise at the back of his throat.
"I have a great friend who is writing one." Miss Dobbs hastened to repair a tactical mistake. "Hers is reminiscences. I am helping with a few of mine. I dare say Auntie has told you I have been on the stage?"
Mr. Harper had been told that.
"Don't you think it's a good idea? My friend gives her name because she married a lord, but I'm to do the donkey work. It would be telling if I told you her name, but don't you think it's business?"
Mr. Harper thought, not very audibly, that it was.
"One of our girls at the Friv., Cassie Smallpiece, who married Lord Bargrave, you know..."
... Mr. Harper did not know, but Miss Dobbs had already struck such a note of intimacy that he somehow felt he ought to have known....
"... Made quite a pot of money out of hers. Of course there was scandal in Cassie's. Cassie was rather warm pastry. But there'll be none in ours, although I expect that'll be money out of our pockets."
Mr. Harper hoped such would not be the case.