"Excuse me, Mr Spencer. I must go. When I received your invitation I did not expect this kind of thing."
"What kind of thing?"
Mr Spencer looked up with a start. It was rapidly becoming more and more obvious to me that he was one of those young men who are incapable of seeing even as far as the tips of their own noses. He had been stammering and stumbling on in apparently sublime unconsciousness of the sort of reception which our masterpiece was receiving. The singularity of Mrs Parker's bearing seemed to take him entirely by surprise.
"May I ask, Mr Spencer, what you call the--stuff you have been reading?"
"Stuff? You mean the piece? It's a musical comedy."
"Indeed. I haven't noticed any music yet, and as for comedy--there is none. It appears to me to be a mere tissue of meaningless vulgarity. Where did you get it from?"
"Miss Wilson and I wrote it together--that is, she did the greater part of it. In fact, Miss Wilson practically wrote it all."
Which was true enough, but he need not have put it quite so emphatically just at that moment.
"Miss Wilson?" Mrs Parker put up her glasses and she looked at me. How she looked! "I have not the pleasure of Miss Wilson's acquaintance, but I cannot help thinking that she might have been better employed."
Then she went. Fancy my sensations!