Dorothy actually told me that she had never read any Browning, and thought that Sophocles was Diogenes, and lived in a tub.

But frankly, Althea, I can't say that I take to her very much.' Aunt Julia, often irritating to Althea, was never more so than when, as now, she assumed that her verdicts and opinions were of importance to her niece.

Althea shrank from open combat with anybody, yet she could, under cover of gentle candour, plant her shafts.

She planted one now in answering: 'I don't think that you would, either of you, take to one another.

Helen's flavour is rather recondite.' 'Recondite, my dear,' said Aunt Julia, who never pretended not to know when a shaft had been planted.