“Must we?” said Mrs. Whittaker, with a superior smile. “Ah, I see that you and I, dear Mrs. M’Quade, must agree to differ. Let me give you some tea. I assure you it is quite conventional tea.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mrs. M’Quade, smiling.
In retailing the conversation to her husband that evening, Mrs. M’Quade remarked that it was quite conventional tea. “I should think about one-and-twopence a pound,” was her comment.
“And how did you like the lady?” her husband asked.
“She is an extraordinary woman, a very extraordinary woman. I don’t know that I like her; on the other hand, I don’t know whether there is anything about her to dislike.”
“What age—what size—what sort of a woman is she?” he asked.
“In age something over forty; in person plump and rather comely. A large, solid woman, with no idea of making the best of herself. She had a tea-gown on to-day that would have made the very angels weep.”
“Would any tea-gown make the angels weep?”
“I think that one would. It was a dingy brown and a salmon-pink. Wherever it was brown you wished it was salmon-pink, and wherever it was salmon-pink you wished it was brown, except when you were wishing that it was black altogether, without any relief at all.”
“Dear me! What was it like?”