Even Mrs. Fisher was caught by the smile.

“Well, you’re a pretty creature,” she said forgivingly.  “It’s a pity you weren’t born fifty years ago.  My friends would have liked looking at you.”

“I’m very glad I wasn’t,” said Scrap.  “I dislike being looked at.”

“Absurd,” said Mrs. Fisher, growing stern again.  “That’s what you are made for, young women like you.  For what else, pray?  And I assure you that if my friends had looked at you, you would have been looked at by some very great people.”

“I dislike very great people,” said Scrap, frowning.  There had been an incident quite recently—­really potentates. . .

“What I dislike,” said Mrs. Fisher, now as cold as that stone she had got up from, “is the pose of the modern young woman.  It seems to me pitiful, positively pitiful, in its silliness.”

And, her stick crunching the pebbles, she walked away.

“That’s all right,” Scrap said to herself, dropping back into her comfortable position with her head in the cushion and her feet on the parapet; if only people would go away she didn’t in the least mind why they went.

“Don’t you think darling Scrap is growing a little, just a little, peculiar?” her mother had asked her father a short time before that latest peculiarity of the flight to San Salvatore, uncomfortably struck by the very odd things Scrap said and the way she had taken to slinking out of reach whenever she could and avoiding everybody except —­such a sign of age—­quite young men, almost boys.

“Eh?  What?  Peculiar?  Well, let her be peculiar if she likes.  A woman with her looks can be any damned thing she pleases,” was the infatuated answer.

“I do let her,” said her mother meekly; and indeed if she did not, what difference would it make?

Mrs. Fisher was sorry she had bothered about Lady Caroline.  She went along the hall towards her private sitting-room, and her stick as she went struck the stone floor with a vigour in harmony with her feelings.  Sheer silliness, these poses.  She had no patience with them.  Unable to be or do anything of themselves, the young of the present generation tried to achieve a reputation for cleverness by decrying all that was obviously great and obviously good and by praising everything, however obviously bad, that was different.  Apes, thought Mrs. Fisher, roused.  Apes.  Apes.  And in her sitting-room she found more apes, or what seemed to her in her present mood more, for there was Mr. Arbuthnot placidly drinking coffee, while at the writing-table, the writing-table she already looked upon as sacred, using her pen, her own pen brought for her hand alone from Prince of Wales Terrace, sat Mrs. Wilkins writing; at the table; in her room; with her pen.

“Isn’t this a delightful place?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot cordially.  “We have just discovered it.”

“I’m writing to Mellersh,” said Mrs. Wilkins, turning her head and also cordially—­as though, Mrs. Fisher thought, she cared a straw who she was writing to and anyhow knew who the person she called Mellersh was.  “He’ll want to know,” said Mrs. Wilkins, optimism induced by her surroundings, “that I’ve got here safely.”