“Why!” cried the young lady, neglecting her soup to stare at me, “we heard you had just come over from living in France. Miss Dinah said so—that old guy at the head of the table.”
“Dr. and Miss Lewis have just come from France. Not I. I know Miss Dinah Lake very well.”
“Do you? Don’t go and tell her I called her an old guy. Mamma wants to keep in with Miss Dinah, or she might be disagreeable. What a stupid town Worcester is!”
“Perhaps you do not know many people in it.”
“We don’t know any one. We had been staying last in a garrison town. That was pleasant: so many nice officers about. You could not go to the window but there’d be some in sight. Here nobody seems to pass but a crew of staid old parsons.”
“We are near the cathedral; that’s why you see so many parsons. Are you going to remain long in Worcester?”
“That’s just as the fancy takes mamma. We have been here already six or seven weeks.”
“Have you no settled home?”
Miss Fanny Podd pursed up her lips and shook her head. “We like change best. A settled home would be wretchedly dull. Ours was given up when papa died.”