Miss Townly went into a very large arm-chair and waveringly selected a crumpet.
"What does it all mean?" she murmured, looking obliquely at her friend's parquet.
"Ask the baker, No. 5 Allitch Street. I always get them from there. And he's a remarkably well-informed man."
"No, I mean life with its extraordinary changes, things you never expected, never dreamed of—and all coming so abruptly. I don't think I'm a stupid person, but I certainly never looked for this."
"For what?"
"This most extraordinary engagement of Hermione's."
Mrs. Creswick, who was a short woman who looked tall, with a briskly conceited but not unkind manner, and a decisive and very English nose, rejoined:
"I don't know why we should call it extraordinary. Everybody gets engaged at some time or other, and Hermione's a woman like the rest of us and subject to aberration. But I confess I never thought she would marry Maurice Delarey. He never seemed to mean more to her than any one else, so far as I could see."
"Everybody seems to mean so much to Hermione that it makes things difficult to outsiders," replied Miss Townly, plaintively. "She is so wide-minded and has so many interests that she dwarfs everybody else. I always feel quite squeezed when I compare my poor little life with hers. But then she has such physical endurance. She breaks the ice, you know, in her bath in the winter—of course I mean when there is ice."
"It isn't only in her bath that she breaks the ice," said Mrs. Creswick.