She was preparing to relabel me, I think.

I had become a spiteful humourist.

Possibly I might be useful for platform malice.
"Why, yes," she said, the faintest of twinkles in her eyes, "she has adopted a niece." The legend went that, at a hotly contested election in which my aunt had played a prominent part, a rainbow poster had beset the walls.

"Who starved her governess ?" it had inquired.
My accidental reference to such electioneering details placed me upon an excellent footing with Miss Churchill.

I seemed quite unawares to have asserted myself a social equal, a person not to be treated as a casual journalist.