‘Thanks.’
The conversation swirled on around her.
‘Who d’you think’s engaged? Three guesses.... Let’s look at the tombstone. Soup....... how classically simple ... just soup.... Take a hundred dirty dishcloths, soak them in hot water, add a few onions.... Dorothy’s bobbed her hair. It suits her. It doesn’t suit her.... My dear, who is that girl next to you?... I’ve done six hours every day this vac.... May you be forgiven.... Well anyway, four regularly.... I’m going to work this term, seven hours solid, no dances.... I’ve got to ... you should have heard the jawing I got from Miss Marsh because I only got a third in Part I.... Well I think that was jolly good: I shall think myself jolly lucky if I get the same.... Old Marsh has lost every human instinct.... D’you know Sibyl Jones has done ten hours every day for two months?... She’s bound to collapse.... Third years ought to be more sensible at their age.... I say, I do believe Miss Ingram’s dyed her hair. I’m sure it’s a different colour.... D’you suppose she’s in love?... I knew a girl at Oxford who overworked most fearfully, and she woke up one morning and every hair on her head had come off and was lying on the pillow beside her, looking like a nasty practical joke. Rather a jar, wasn’t it? But she took to a wig, my dears, a flaxen waved wig and it was such an improvement that she left off her glasses and became quite flighty and took to powdering her nose as well, so it was a blessing in disguise; and then her Maths coach proposed to her and they got married, and all I wonder is whether he got a shock or whether she’d warned him, because I s’pose she takes it off at night and she’s as bald as an egg without it; but I suppose anyway baldness doesn’t matter in true love.... It’s a warning isn’t it?’
‘Pleasant idiocy,’ said Judith very quietly in the yell of laughter that followed. ‘Idiotic pleasantry.’
‘Did you speak?’ said the girl on her other side.
‘N—no.’
‘I suppose you’ve come up for a little visit? I wonder whose guest?...’
‘No, no. I’ve come up for good—I’ve just arrived. I came up a day late. I——’
‘You mean you’re a fresher?’
‘Yes.’