“You seem very anxious to keep me from dear Clare!”
This persistence annoyed her husband and he rebuked her sternly.
“Sit still, Beatrice, can’t you? Don’t you see that we have arrived a little early and that we have taken Clare unawares? Let the poor girl go on with her dressing.”
“Don’t bully me in other people’s flats, Charles,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown. “I have enough of it at home.”
Her husband was not to be quelled.
“Herbert and I can hardly hear ourselves speak,” he growled, “you keep up such a clatter.”
Mrs. Atkinson Brown flared up.
“I come out to get the chance of speaking a little. For eight years now I have been listening to your interminable monologues, and can’t get a word in edgeways.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said her husband.
“Have you been married eight years already, my dear?” asked Mrs. Heywood in a tone of amiable surprise.