ng seen
Ronnie arrive in the hall as she was being shown upstairs.

"Ronnie Storre is coming, I believe," said Cicely, "so you're not
breaking into a tete-a-tete."

"Ronnie, oh I don't count him," said Joan gaily; "he's just a boy who
looks nice and eats asparagus. I hear he's getting to play the piano
really well. Such a pity. He will grow fat; musicians always do, and it
will ruin him. I speak feelingly because I'm gravitating towards
plumpness myself. The Divine Architect turns us out fearfully and
wonderfully built, and the result is charming to the eye, and then He
adds another chin and two or three extra inches round the waist, and the
effect is ruined. Fortunately you can always find another Ronnie when
this one grows fat and uninteresting; the supply of boys who look nice
and eat asparagus is unlimited. Hullo, Mr. Storre, we were all talking
about you."

"Nothing very damaging, I hope?" said Ronnie, who had just entered the
room.

"No, we were merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life,
your chin must remain single. When one's chin begins to lead a double
life one's own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed. You
needn't tell me that you haven't any hankerings after depravity; people
with your coloured eyes and hair are always depraved."

"Let me introduce you to my husband, Ronnie," said Cicely, "and then
let's go and begin lunch."

"You two must almost feel as if you were honeymooning again," said Joan
as they sat down; "you must have quite forgotten each other's tastes and
peculiarities since you last met. Old Emily Fronding was talking about
you yesterday, when I mentioned that Murrey was expected home; 'curious
sort of marriage tie,' she said, in that stupid staring way of hers,
'when husband and wife spend most of their time in different continents.
I don't call it marriage at all.' 'Nonsense,' I said, 'it's the best way
of doing things. The Yeovils will be a united and devoted couple long
after heaps of their married contemporaries have trundled through the
Divorce Court.' I forgot at the moment that her youngest girl had
divorced her husband last year, and that her second girl is rumoured to
be contemplating a similar step. One can't remember everything."

Joan Mardle was remarkable for being able to remember the smallest
details in the family lives of two or three hundred acquaintances.

From personal matters she went with a bound to the political small