And, as it happened, no sooner had Dorothy tucked her last letter back into its envelope than Katie broke out—earnestly, proselytizingly, and very prettily on the stump.
"There you are!" she exclaimed. "That's all exactly what I mean! Why, any one of those letters ought to be enough to convince anybody! Here are all these stupid people at home, ready to believe everything a native tells them, going on as they do, and hardly one of them's ever set foot out of England in his life! Of course the Indians know exactly what they want, but don't you see, Dorothy—," very patiently she explained it for fear Dorothy should not see, "—don't you see that it's all so much a matter of course to Mollie and those that they can actually write whole letters about window-curtains! I love that about the window-curtains! It's all such an old story to them! They know, you see, and haven't got to be talking about it all the time in order to persuade themselves! There it is!—But these other people don't know anything at all. They don't even see what a perfect answer window-curtains are to them! They go on and on and on—you do see what I mean, Dorothy?——"
"Yes, dear," said Dorothy, mildly thinking of the great number of people there were in the world who would take no end of trouble to explain things to her. "Go on."
And Katie continued to urge upon her friend the argument that those know most about a country who know most about it.
Katie had got to the stage of being almost sure that she remembered Mollie's coming into the studio in Cheyne Walk one day, when Lady Tasker, who had not spoken, suddenly looked up from her crochet and said, "Look, Dorothy—that's the girl I was speaking about—coming along past the Museum there."
Dorothy rose and walked to the window.— "Where?" she said.
"Passing the policeman now."
Dorothy gave a sudden exclamation.—"Why," she exclaimed, "—come here, Katie, quick—it's Amory Towers!—It is Amory, isn't it?"
Katie had run to the window, too. The two women stood watching the figure in the mushroom-white hat and the glaucous blue velvet that idled forlornly along the pavement.
"Do you mean Mrs. Pratt?" said Lady Tasker, putting up her glass again. "Are you quite sure?"