“Not like that,” interrupted Blanche. “It’s very different just wanting to look nice. Personally, I’m in no ’urry to get married, thank you.”
“You wait till Mr Right comes along,” put in Mrs Gosling, and then turned the conversation by saying: “Well, father, what’s the news this evening?”
“Nothin’ excitin’,” replied Gosling. “Seems this new plague’s spreadin’ in China.”
“They’re always inventin’ new diseases, nowadays, or callin’ old ones by new names,” said Mrs Gosling. The two girls were busy with a sheet of note-paper and a stump of pencil that seemed to require frequent lubrication; they were making calculations.
“This one’s quite new, seemingly,” returned Gosling. “It’s only the men as get it.”
“No need for us to worry, then,” put in Millie, more as a duty, some slight return for benefits promised, than because she took any interest in the subject. Blanche was absorbed; her unseeing gaze was fixed on the mantelpiece and ever and again she removed the point of the pencil from her mouth and wrote feverishly.
“Oh, ain’t there?” replied Gosling. He turned his head in order to argue from so strong a position. “And where’d you be, and all the rest of the women, if you ’adn’t got no men to look after you?”
“I expect we could get along pretty well, if we had to,” said Millie.
Gosling winked at his wife, and indicated by an upward movement of his chin that he was astounded at such innocence. “Who’d buy your ‘fal-lals’ for you, I should like to know?” he asked.
“We’d have to earn money for ourselves,” said Millie.