'No, thank you.'
'Pardon me, you will.'
'Excuse me, I won't.'
'We shall see.'
Miss Bewicke touched the bell button. Miss Broad eyed her with flaming cheeks.
'It's no use your ordering anything to eat for me, because I sha'n't touch it. You treat me as if I were a child. I'm not a child.'
'My dear Miss Broad, we are both of us women--both of us; and there are senses in which women and children are synonyms. Mr Holland was once in love with me--he was, I assure you. He is now in love with you, which fact creates between us a bond of sympathy.'
'I don't see it.'
'No? I do. You will. He appears to have got himself into, we will put it, a rather equivocal position. It is our bounden duty, as joint sympathisers, to get him out of it. We will discuss our bounden duty; but I never can discuss anything when I'm starving, which I am.'
To the waiter who appeared Miss Bewicke gave orders for an immediate lunch for two. Miss Broad kept silence. The truth was, she was not finding Miss Bewicke altogether the sort of person she expected. That little lady went on,--