It was not often Mrs. Mortomley claimed the colour manufactory for her own, but when it was attacked she flung personal feeling into the defence.
"Henry says so," was the convincing reply.
"Henry," with a momentary pause on the name intended to mark the word as a quotation, "Henry may know what he makes himself, but I cannot understand how he can tell what we make," and Dolly folded her hands together in her lap and waited for the next aggressive move.
"I think, my dear, City men have ways and means of ascertaining these things."
"Very likely," said Mrs. Mortomley, "for I think, my dear, City men are usually a set of ill-natured gossiping old women."
"Do not be cross, Dolly," suggested her friend.
"I shall be cross if I choose, Leonora," said Mrs. Mortomley. "It is enough to make any one cross. What right has Mr. Werner—for it is Mr. Werner, I know, who has really spoken to me through your mouth—what right has he, I repeat, to dictate to us how we shall spend our money. If he likes to have horrid, tiresome, vulgar, prosy people at his house—when he might get pleasant people—that is his affair. I do not interfere with him—(only I will not go to your parties)—but he has no sort of claim to dictate to us, and I will not bear it, Nora, I will not."
"Dolly, dear, I was only speaking for your good—"
"I do not want good spoken to me," interrupted Mrs. Mortomley.
"And it is not for your good," went on Mrs. Werner calmly, "that you should have Antonia and Rupert quartered here. If your husband had given them say a couple of hundred pounds a year, they would have thought far more of his generosity, and it would have cost you less than half what it will do now, besides being wiser in every way."