can't remember the name. The Vicar knows all about him, but he is so close———"
"How hot and uncomfortable the dear Vicar is looking," said Mrs. Pirbright. "I've noticed it before when he sits next to Lady Hammergallow. She simply will not respect his cloth. She goes on———"
"His tie is all askew," said the very eldest Miss Papaver, "and his hair! It really hardly looks as though he had brushed it all day."
"Seems a foreign sort of chap. Affected. All very well in a drawing-room," said George Harringay, sitting apart with the younger Miss Pirbright. "But for my part, give me a masculine man and a feminine woman. What do you think?"
"Oh!—I think so too," said the younger Miss Pirbright.
"Guineas and guineas," said Lady Hammergallow. "I've heard that some of them keep quite stylish establishments. You would scarcely credit it———"
"I love music, Mr. Angel, I adore it. It stirs something in me. I can scarcely describe it," said Mrs. Jehoram. "Who is it says that delicious antithesis: 'Life without music is brutality; music without life is'— Dear me! perhaps you remember? 'Music without life'—it's Ruskin I think?"
"I'm sorry that I do not," said the Angel. "I have read very few books."
"How charming of you!" said Mrs. Jehoram. "I wish I didn't. I sympathise with you profoundly. I would do the same, only we poor women—I suppose it's originality we lack— And down here one is driven to the most desperate proceedings———"
222
