Miss Frisby, having turned a pale eye on the pothooks and twiddleys in her note-book, translated them in a pale voice.
“‘Surely of all the leading hostesses in New York Society there can be few more versatile than Mrs Waddlesleigh Peagrim. I am amazed every time I go to her delightful home on West End Avenue to see the scope and variety of her circle of intimates. Here you will see an ambassador with a fever …’”
“With a what?” demanded Mrs Peagrim sharply.
“‘Fever,’ I thought you said,” replied Miss Frisby stolidly. “I wrote ‘fever’.”
“‘Diva.’ Do use your intelligence, my good girl. Go on.”
“‘Here you will see an ambassador with a diva from the opera, exchanging the latest gossip from the chancelleries for intimate news of the world behind the scenes. There, the author of the latest novel talking literature to the newest debutante. Truly one may say that Mrs Peagrim has revived the saloon.’”
Mrs Peagrim bit her lip.
“‘Salon’.”
“‘Salon’,” said Miss Frisby unemotionally. “‘They tell me, I am told, I am informed …’” She paused. “That’s all I have.”
“Scratch out those last words,” said Mrs Peagrim irritably. “You really are hopeless, Miss Frisby! Couldn’t you see that I had stopped dictating and was searching for a phrase? Otie, what is a good phrase for ‘I am told’?”