"It is early," lamented Mrs. Jakes. "But we should be so much obliged."
Paul nodded. "All right," he said. "I will bring her, Mrs. Jakes."
There are transactions consecrated to the humorous point of view, landmarks in the history of laughter. Mrs. du Preez honestly believed that a youth and a girl alone in the dawn were a spectacle essentially mirthful.
"Catch him missing the chance," she said, with her slightly jarring laugh. "None of your larks, now, Paul! Promise you 'll behave!"
"Yes, mother," Paul promised gravely, and her face went blank before the clear eyes he turned upon her. Mrs. Jakes in her chair rustled her stiff dress in a wriggle of approval.
"Miss Harding is the name," she told Paul. "You 'll manage to find her? I don't know at all what she 's like, but she comes of a very good family, I believe. You can't mistake her."
"Paul knows the look of the lungy ones by now," Mrs. du Preez assured her. "Don't you, Paul? It 's lungs, of course, Mrs. Jakes?"
"Chest trouble," corrected Mrs. Jakes, nervously. She preferred the less exact phrase, for there is indelicacy in localising diseases, and from the lungs to the bowels it is but a step. "Chest trouble, a slight attack. Fortunately, Miss Harding is taking it in time. The doctor lays stress on the necessity for taking it in time."
"Well," said Mrs. du Preez, "whatever it is, she 'll 'ave the fashions. Lungs or liver, they 've got to dress, and it 'll be something to see a frock again. She 's from London, you said?"
Mrs. Jakes rearranged her black skirts which had suffered by implication, and suppressed an impulse to reply that she had not said London.