hear some funny stories there ... but only if you went as David Williams in your man’s kit—­My! what a wheeze that’s bin!...  And from all they tell me, that place in South America—­Buenos Aires, is a reg’lar Hell.  But ...  God bless my soul ... there’s nothin’ to fuss about here.  Our young ladies would take on like anything if you forced them to go away from my care.  It’s gettin’ near the time when we close our Roquebrune establishment for the summer, an’ the girls’ll all be goin’ back to their homes in the mountains and fattenin’ up on new milk; still if you go there before the middle of May you’ll see things pretty much as they are in the season; and what’s more you’ll see plenty of perfectly respectable people stoppin’ there.  Of course the prices are high.  But look at the luxury!  What that wicked Bax used to call ’All the Home Comforts.’  He liked ‘is joke.  I hear he’s settlin’ down at home with his old Dutch.  She’s bin awful good to him, I must say. I couldn’t stand ’im long.  I don’t often lose me temper but I did with him, after he got licked by Paul Dombey, and I threw an inkpot at his head and ain’t seen him for a matter of thirteen or fourteen year.  He sold out all his shares in the Warren Hotels when he came a cropper.”

“Well, mother, I’ll have a look round.  I’m truly glad you’re quit of the German and Austrian horrors, though you must bear the blame for having organized them in the first place.  I will presently put on David Williams’s clothes and see what I can see of them.  But if you want me to be a daughter to you, you’ll take the first and the readiest opportunity of removing your name from these—­ach!—­these legacies of the Nineteenth century.  You’ll wind up the Warren Hotels’ Company, and as to the two houses you’ve got here and at Roquebrune, you’ll turn them now into decent places where no indecency is tolerated.”

Mrs. Warren:  “I’ll think it over and I don’t say as I won’t give in to you.  I’m tired of a rackety life and I’m proud of you and ... and ... (cries) ... ashamed of meself ... ashamed whenever I look at you.  Though I’ve never bin what I call bad.  I’ve helped many a lame dog over a stile....  That’s partly how you came into existence—­almost the only time I’ve ever been in love—­Many years ago—­why, girl, you must be—­getting on for thirty-five—­let me see ... (muses).  Yes, it was in the winter of ’73-74.  I’d bin at Ostende with a young barrister from London ... him I told you about once, who used to write plays, and we came on to Brussels because he had some business with the Belgian Government.  He left me pretty much to myself just then, though quite open-handed, don’t you know....  One day I was walking through one of the poorer streets where the people was very Flemish, and I stood looking up at an old doorway—­Dunno’ why—­S’pose I thought it picturesque—­reminded me of Praddy’s drawin’s.  And an old woman comes up and says in French, ’Madame est Anglaise?’ In those days I couldn’t hardly speak a word o’ French, but I said ‘Oui.’  Then she wants me to come upstairs but I thought it was some trap.  However as far as I could make out there was a young Irishman there, she said, lying very sick of a fever and seemingly had no friends.