Jean sank into a chair with a book, but Pamela produced some visiting-cards and read aloud: 

  “MRS. DUFF-WHALLEY. 
   MISS DUFF-WHALLEY.

  THE TOWERS,
      PRIORSFORD.

“Who are they, please? and why do they come to see me?”

Jean shut her book, but kept her finger in as if hoping to get back to it soon, and smiled broadly.

“Mrs. Duff-Whalley is a wonderful woman,” she said.  “She knows everything about everybody and simply scents out social opportunities.  Your name would draw her like a magnet.”

“Why is she called Duff-Whalley? and where does she live?  I’m frightfully intrigued.”

“As to the first,” said Jean, “there was no thought of pleasing either you or me when she was christened—­or rather when the late Mr. Duff-Whalley was christened.  And I pointed out the house to you the other day.  You asked what the monstrosity was, and I told you it was called The Towers.”

“I remember.  A staring red-and-white house with about thirty bow-windows and twenty turrets.  It denies the landscape.”

“Wait,” said Jean, “till you see it close at hand.  It’s the most naked, newest thing you ever saw.  Not a creeper, not an ivy leaf is allowed to crawl on it; weather seems to have no effect on it:  it never gets to look any less new.  And in summer it is worse, for then round about it blaze the reddest geraniums and the yellowest calceolarias and the bluest lobelias that it’s possible to imagine.”

“Ghastly!  What is the owner like?”

“Small, with yellowish hair turning grey.  She has a sharp nose, and her eyes seem to dart out at you, take you all in, and then look away.  She is rather like a ferret, and she has small, sharp teeth like a ferret.  I’m never a bit sure she won’t bite.  She really is rather a wonderful woman.  She hasn’t been here very many years, but she dominates everyone.  At whatever house you meet her she has the air of being hostess.  She welcomes you and advises you where to sit, makes suitable conversation and finally bids you good-bye, and you feel yourself murmuring to her the grateful ‘Such a pleasant afternoon,’ that was due to the real hostess.  She is in constant conflict with the other prominent matrons in Priorsford, but she always gets her own way.  At a meeting she is quite insupportable.  She just calmly tells us what we are to do.  It’s no good saying we are busy; it’s no good saying anything.  We walk away with a great district to collect and a pile of pamphlets under one arm....  Her nose is a little on one side, and when I sit and look at her presiding at a meeting I toy with the thought that someone goaded to madness by her calm persistence had once heaved something at her, and wish I had been there to see.  Really, though, she is rather a blessing in the place; she keeps us from stagnation.  I read somewhere that when they bring tanks of cod to this country from wherever cod abound, they put a cat-fish in beside them, and it chases the cod round all the time, so that they arrive in good condition.  Mrs. Duff-Whalley is our cat-fish.”