'Really! How delightful. Who was there?'

This is always a woman's first question.

'Oh, you were there, of course. And father. Nurse, too. It was a lovely
dream. Such a nice place.'

'Was Dilly there?'

'Dilly? Er--no--no--she wasn't. She was in the night nursery, with
Satan.'

Sometimes Edith thought that her daughter's names were decidedly a
failure--Aspasia by mistake, Matilda through obstinacy, and Dilly by
accident. However the child herself was a success. She was four years
old when the incident occurred about the Mitchells. The whole of this
story turns eventually on the Mitchells.

The Ottleys lived in a concise white flat at Knightsbridge. Bruce's
father had some time ago left him a good income on certain conditions;
one was that he was not to leave the Foreign Office before he was
fifty. One afternoon Edith was talking to the telephone in a voice of
agonised entreaty that would have melted the hardest of hearts, but did
not seem to have much effect on the Exchange, which, evidently, was not
responsive to pathos that day.

'Oh! Exchange, _why_ are you ringing off? _Please_ try again.... Do I
want any number? Yes, I do want any number, of course, or why should I
ring up?... I want 6375 Gerrard.'