“Yes, indeed. Papa and mamma are very good-natured, and go whenever we are asked to a ball, as I am fond of dancing.”
“How very odd! and yet I am quite sure I should have remembered it if we had met before in town this year.”
“Is it so very odd?” asked Mary, laughing; “London is a very large place; it seems very natural that two people should be able to live in it for a long time without meeting.”
“Indeed, you are quite mistaken. You will find out very soon how small London is—at least how small society is, and you will get to know every face quite well—I mean the face of everyone in society.”
“You must have a wonderful memory!”
“Yes, I have a good memory for faces, and, by the way, I am sure I have seen you before; but not in town, and I cannot remember where. But it is not at all necessary to have a memory to know everybody in society by sight; you meet every night almost; and altogether there are only two or three hundred faces to remember. And then there is something in the look of people, and the way they come into a room or stand about, which tells you at once whether they are amongst those whom you need trouble yourself about.”
“Well, I cannot understand it. I seem to be in a whirl of faces, and can hardly ever remember any of them.”
“You will soon get used to it. By the end of the season you will see that I am right. And you ought to make a study of it, or you will never feel at home in London.”
“I must make good use of my time then. I suppose I ought to know everybody here, for instance?”
“Almost everybody.”