There was no subject Mrs. Merridew couldn’t talk about. She discoursed on Christian Science and vitamins, on Bolshevism and little theaters, on Japan’s designs in Manchuria and television, on theosophy and bimetallism, on the color of your aura and the value of constructive thinking in contrast to negative thinking, on the theory of re-incarnation and the Higher Criticism, on the planetesimal hypothesis and the trend of modern fiction, on the best way to preserve your furs from moths and how to give a cat castor oil. She reminded Pat of a random verse conned in schooldays and she wrote it of her in her descriptive letter to Hilary.

“Her talk was like a stream that runs

With rapid flow from rocks to roses,

She passed from parakeets to puns,

She leaped from Mahomet to Moses.”

“I do be thinking she ain’t mentally sound,” groaned Judy. “There was a quare streak in the Hindersons I do be rimimbering. Her grandmother was off be spells and her Great-uncle had his coffin made years afore he died and kipt it under the spare-room bed. Oh, oh, the talk it made.”

“I knew the man when I was a boy, “ said Tillytuck. “His wife kept her fruit cake and the good sheets in it.”

Judy went on as if there had been no interruption.

“And yet, in spite av iverything, girls dear, I do be kind av liking her.”