Page:O Douglas - Olivia in India.djvu/50

38 way, "What was that nasty thing Mrs. Wilmot was saying all about dead women?" and do you know what she objected to?

We are very much worried by people planting themselves beside us and favouring us with their views on life in general. One woman—rather a tiresome person, a spinster with a curiously horselike face and large teeth—sometimes stays for hours at a time and leaves us limp. Even gentle Mrs. Wilmot approaches, as nearly as it is possible for her to approach, unkindness in her comments on her. She has such playful, girlish manners, and an irritating way of giving vent to the most utter platitudes with the air of having just discovered a new truth. She has been with us this morning and mentioned that her father was four times removed from a peerage. I stifled a childish desire to ask who had removed him, while Mrs. Wilmot murmured, "How interesting!" As she minced away Mrs. Crawley said meditatively, "The Rocking Horse Fly," and with a squeal of delight I realized that that was what she had always vaguely reminded me of. You remember the insect, don't you, in