Dim memories of Mrs. Mackridge floated through my mind as I listened to her....
I was whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall off into a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Mumble—but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that afternoon, either by way of humour or necessity.
That must have been one of my earliest essays in the art of polite conversation, and I remember that I began by criticising the local railway service, and that at the third sentence or thereabouts Mrs. Mumble said in a distinctly bright and encouraging way that she feared I was a very “frivolous” person.
I wonder now what it was I said that was “frivolous.”
I don’t know what happened to end that conversation, or if it had an end. I remember talking to one o
