'I see—I see. You make little expeditions to various points of interest—the Zoological Gardens, the Crystal Palace, and so forth.'
It began to be like the dialogues in the old-fashioned reading-books, carefully marked I 'Q.' and 'A.'
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'Yes,' I said, 'I do. I haven't seen the Zoo yet, but I've seen Mrs. Por———'; there I stopped, knowing that Mr. Pink could not be expected to perceive the sequence of my ideas.
But he seemed to conclude that he had ascertained as much as was necessary. 'I think, Miss Wick,' he said, 'we must come to the point at once. You have not been in England long, and you may or may not be aware of the extreme difficulty which attaches—er—to obtaining—that is to say, which Amer—foreigners find in obtaining anything like a correct idea of—of social institutions here. To a person, I may say, without excellent introductions, it is, generally speaking, impossible.'
I said I had heard of this difficulty.
'I do not know whether you, personally, have any curiosity upon this point, but——'
I hastened to say that I had a great deal.