I should be sorry for you
and feel your arms and legs and inquire whether you had sustained any
internal injuries."
She is a pretty, spare woman with a bird-like face and soft brown hair
just turning grey; and as good-hearted a little creature as ever adored
five healthy children and an elderly baronet with disastrous views on
scientific farming.
"Dear old boy," she said in milder accents, "I didn't mean to be
unkind. I want to be good to you and help you, so much so that I asked
Bingley"--Bingley is my housekeeper--"whether I could stay to dinner."
"That's good of you--but this magnificence----?"
"I'm going on later to the Foreign Office reception."
"Then you do still mingle with the great and gorgeous?" I said.
"What do you mean? Why shouldn't I?"
I laughed, suspecting rightly that my sisters' social position had not
been greatly imperilled by the profligacy of their scandal-bespattered
brother.
"What are people saying about me?" I asked suddenly.
She made a helpless gesture.
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