"I only repeat what every one is saying."

"Well, I'm sure I don't care," cried Lady Garvington recklessly, and
rose to depart on some vague errand. "I'm only in the world to look
after dinners and breakfasts. Clara Greeby's a cat making all this fuss
about--"

"Hush! There she is."

Lady Garvington fluttered round, and drifted towards Miss Greeby, who
had just stepped out on to the terrace. The banker's daughter was in a
tailor-made gown with a man's cap and a man's gloves, and a man's
boots--at least, as Mrs. Belgrove thought, they looked like that--and
carried a very masculine stick, more like a bludgeon than a cane. With
her ruddy complexion and ruddy hair, and piercing blue eyes, and
magnificent figure--for she really had a splendid figure in spite of
Mrs. Belgrove's depreciation--she looked like a gigantic Norse goddess.
With a flashing display of white teeth, she came along swinging her
stick, or whirling her shillalah, as Mrs. Belgrove put it, and seemed
the embodiment of coarse, vigorous health.

"Taking a sun-bath?" she inquired brusquely and in a loud baritone
voice. "Very wise of you two elderly things. I am going for a walk."

Mrs. Belgrove was disagreeable in her turn. "Going to the Abbot's Wood?"

"How clever of you to guess," Miss Greeby smiled and nodded. "Yes, I'm
going to look up Lambert"; she always spoke of her male friends in this
hearty fashion. "He ought to be here enjoying himself instead of living