Mrs Chilleywater turned surprised. “Not even Socrates,” she declared, “said anything truer than that.”
“A compound!” Lady Something twittered again.
“I should like to put that into the lips of Delitsiosa.”
“Who’s Delitsiosa?” the Ambassadress asked as a smothered laugh broke out beside her.
Mrs Chilleywater looked up.
“I’d forgotten you were there. Strange thing among the cedar-boughs,” she said.
The Hon. Lionel Limpness tossed a slippered foot flexibly from his hammock.
“You may well ask ‘who’s Delitsiosa’!” he exclaimed.
“She is my new heroine,” Mrs Chilleywater replied, after a few quick little clutches at her hair.
“I trust you won’t treat her, dear, quite so shamefully as your last.”