like it, anyhow. You seem to enjoy all this"--waving a hand around--
"as if you were a girl who had never seen anything. I'm sick and tired
of the whole show."

"Then don't have any more to do with it. Go home."

"Home! What home have I?"

"A lovely flat in town, they tell me, where you give the best dinners,
and ladies' theatre parties and things--" "Pshaw! I am hardly ever
there. I hate the racket of London in the season--I'm not up to it
nowadays--and you wouldn't have me stranded in Piccadilly at this time
of year, I presume? I'm obliged to spend the winter down south--and by
the same token I must soon be getting off, or these east winds
and damp mists will play the deuce with my bronchitis--"

"Oh, it's bronchitis, is it? I knew it was something. I suppose you've
been coddling yourself with hot rooms and all sorts of flannel things;
that's the way people make themselves tender, and get chills and chest
complaints, and get old before their time."

"The doctors insist on flannel--the natural wool--all of them."

"The greatest mistake in the world. I used to wear it because I thought
the doctors ought to know, and I was always getting colds. Now I never
let a bit of wool touch my skin--haven't for years and years--and
never know what it means to have a cold."

"That is contrary to all the traditions," he remarked seriously,
addressing her handsome back; for she was still supposed to be writing