“Well, she tolerated—”
“That’s the word, I think,” assented Mrs. Denby.
“We walked the station at Vienna. We took an ice at Buda-Pesth. We wondered about Queen Nathalie at Belgrade. We bought beads at Sofia. We shivered over the Bulgarian soldiers squatting on the platform against Turkish banditti. I told her how an Orient Express had been held up the autumn before, a Frankfort banker abstracted, and his ears sent to his counting-house with a request for a gold payment or else his tongue would follow.”
“That was horrid of you,” said Mrs. Denby.
“Well, at Constantinople, her father was not there.”
“It was terrible,” said Mrs. Denby.
“But I knew the American Consul’s wife, who took in the situation.”
“It was very nice of her,” said Mrs. Denby.
“We roamed about the Pera; sentimentalized in San Sofia; bargained—”
“With your money,” said Mrs. Denby.