Mrs Simons knocked perfunctorily at the dining-room door.
A young voice bade her come in. “I wanted to tell you that I heard from my cousins in Italy this morning. I am going to stay with them for a little, so I shall be leaving you at the end of the week.”
The landlady’s cold stare was disconcerting. There was a distinct note of disapproval in her voice as she answered, “I do not know much about Italy.” She seemed to think it not quite a seemly subject, yet she pursued it. “I should have thought it was better for a young lady without parents or friends to find some occupation in her own country.”
Olive smiled. “Ah, but I hate boiled potatoes, and I think I shall love Italy and Italian cooking. You remember the Athenians who were always seeking some new thing? They had a good time, Mrs Simons.”
“I hope you may not live to wish those words unsaid, miss,” the woman answered primly. “You have as good as sold your birthright, as Esau did, in that speech.”
“He was much nicer than Jacob.”
“Oh, miss, how can you! But, after all, I suppose you are not altogether one of us since you have foreign cousins. What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh they say.”
“I am quite English, if that is what you mean. My aunt married an Italian.”
Mrs Simons’s eyes had wandered from the girl’s face to the heavy chandelier tied up in yellow muslin, and thence, by way of “Bubbles,” framed in tarnished gilt, to the door. “Ah, well, I shall take your notice,” she said finally.
She went down again into the kitchen. “I never know where to have her,” she complained. “There’s something queer and foreign about her for all she says. What’s bred in the bone! I said that to her face, and I repeat it to you, Gwendolen.”