"Well, we don't know them. But there are a great many people in Scale one
doesn't know."

"Are they socially impossible, or what?"

"Oh--socially, they would be considered--in Scale--all right. But he is,
or was, mixed up with some very queer people."

Anne's cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her.
Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit. The word queer was applied in
Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so
much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer.

"Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I believe he belonged to a very
fast set before he married her."

"And she? Is she nice?"

"She may be very nice for all I know."

"I think," said Anne, "she wouldn't call if she wasn't nice, you know."

She meant that if Mrs. Lawson Hannay hadn't been nice Walter would never
have sanctioned her calling.

"Oh, as for that," said her friend, "you know what Scale is. The less
nice they are the more they keep on calling. But I should think"--she had
suddenly perceived where Anne's argument was tending--"she is probably
all right."