"The lane!" he exclaimed as he sprang out. "And it's the same as ever."
"I don't remember it a bit," said all three, gazing about them vaguely.
"The garden!" he displayed it in triumph.
"I fancied it was quite big," said Nina. "Funny how wee children's eyes exaggerate, isn't it?" But she had not really been so wee as all that.
"The hall, where Boultbee was always ragging us because we didn't wipe our shoes!" He had thrown the door open before the maid could run upstairs.
"Who was Boultbee?" asked Regina. "What a memory you have!"
They lunched; and they were blithe at luncheon; they discussed a divorce case in smart circles. Regina said hurriedly that there was "another side to the story." She knew no more about it than she had read in the papers, but she now moved on the confines of smart circles, and there are people who can never accustom themselves to advancement, pecuniary or social.
"Her husband is such a scamp," she explained, "such a scamp. I don't defend her, but there's so much that never came out in court. Dear Lady Marminger, her mother, was always against the match; she always felt it would be fatal. I recollect when we were staying at the Abbey once—" She was the most obnoxious variety of snob: the middle-class woman who has married into the fringe of society. If she had written novels, everybody in them who wasn't a duchess would have been a duke.
"One of the cleverest things ever said in the divorce court," Ted began judicially, "was when Hollburn was cross-examining——"
"Oh, the scamp theory is worn out," struck in Nina. "When a woman has married a scamp, her family feel provided with an excuse for everything odious she does all the rest of her life."