"The dinner itself was very good," she said. "All their dinners are, you know. But Mrs. Colquhoun was "—she raised her hands, and nodded her head— "well, just too awful!" she concluded.
"Indeed!" he observed, leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, and settling himself for a treat generally. "You surprise me, because she has never struck me as being the kind of person who would set the Thames on fire in any way."
Mrs. Guthrie Brimston smiled enigmatically: "Do you admire her very much?" she asked with the utmost suavity.
"Well," he answered warily, "she is rather peculiar in appearance, don't you know."
Mrs. Guthrie Brimston drew her own conclusions, not from the words, but from the wariness, and proceeded: "It is not in appearance only that that she is peculiar, then. She astonished us all last night, I can assure you."
"How?" he asked, to fill up an artistic pause.
"By the things she said!" Mrs. Guthrie Brimston answered, with an affectation of reserve.
"Now you do surprise me!" Captain Belliot declared. "Because I cannot imagine her saying anything but 'How do you do?' and 'Good-bye,' 'Yes' and 'No,' 'Indeed!' 'Please,' 'Thank you,' and 'Do you think so?' On my honour, those words are all I have ever heard her utter, and I have met her as often as anybody on the island. Now, I like a woman with something in her," he concluded, ogling Mrs. Guthrie Brimston.
"Well, then, she must have been hibernating, or something, when she first came out, for she has begun to talk now with a vengeance," Mrs. Guthrie Brimston answered smartly.
"But what has she been saying?" he asked, with great curiosity.