fortably enough on this assumption of his
detachments. "If you mean by that her being the biggest fool alive I'm
quite ready to agree with you. It's exactly what makes me afraid. Yet
how can I decently say in especial," he asked, "of what?"

The Duchess still perched on her critical height. "Of what but one of
your amazing English periodical public washings of dirty linen? There's
not the least necessity to 'say'!" she laughed. "If there's anything
more remarkable than these purifications it's the domestic comfort with
which, when all has come and gone, you sport the articles purified."

"It comes back, in all that sphere," Mr. Mitchett instructively opined,
"to our national, our fatal want of style. We can never, dear Duchess,
take too many lessons, and there's probably at the present time no more
useful function to be performed among us than that dissemination of
neater methods to which you're so good as to contribute."

He had had another idea, but before he reached it his companion had
gaily broken in. "Awfully good one for you, Duchess--and I'm bound to
say that, for a clever woman, you exposed yourself! I've at any rate a
sense of comfort," Lord Petherton pursued, "in the good relations
now more and more established between poor Fanny and Mrs. Brook. Mrs.
Brook's awfully kind to her and awfully sharp, and Fanny will take
things from her that she won't take from me. I keep saying to Mrs.
Brook--don't you know?--'Do keep hold of her and let her have it
strong.' She hasn't, upon my honour, any one in the world but me."

"And we know the extent of THAT resource!" the Duchess freely commented.

"That's exactly what Fanny says--that SHE knows it," Petherton
good-humouredly agreed. "She says my beastly hypocrisy makes her sick.
There are people," he pleasantly rambled on, "who are awfully free with
their advice, but it's mostly fearful rot. Mrs. Brook's isn't, upon my
word--I've tried some myself!"

"You talk as if it were something nasty and homemade--gooseberry wine!"
the Duchess laughed; "but one can't know the dear soul, of course,
without knowing that she has set up, for the convenience of her friends,
a little office for consultations. She listens to the case, she strokes
her chin and prescribes--"

"And the beauty of it is," cried Lord Petherton, "that she makes no
charge whatever!"

"She doesn't take a guinea at the time, but you may still get your
account," the Duchess returned. "Of course we know that t