“We might learn too much.”

“What does anyone know of me that I’m ashamed of?” roared Miss Impett.

“That’s just it.”

“Just what?”

“Some people have no shame.”

“Do try and remember you’re ladies,” put in Miss Allen, in an effort to still the storm.

“Well, she shouldn’t say I ought to wash my hands before getting into bed,” remarked Miss Impett.

“I didn’t say you should,” said Miss Potter.

“What did you say?”

“What I said was that anyone with any pretension to the name of lady would wash her hands before getting into bed,” corrected Miss Potter.

“I know you don’t think me a lady,” broke out Miss Impett.  “But ma was quite a lady till she started to let her lodgings in single rooms.”

“Don’t say any more and let’s all go to sleep,” urged pacific Miss Allen, who was all the time keeping an anxious eye on her friend Miss Potter.

Miss Impett, perhaps fired by her family reminiscence, was not so easily mollified.

“Of course, if certain people, who’re nobodies, try to be’ave as somebodies, one naturally wants to know where they’ve learned their classy manners,” she remarked.

“Was you referring to me?” asked Miss Potter.

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” replied Miss Impett.

“But I was speaking to you.  Was you referring to me?”

“Never mind who I was referring to.”

“Whatever I’ve done,” said Miss Potter pointedly, “whatever I’ve done, I’ve never made myself cheap with a something in the City.”

“No.  ’E wouldn’t be rich enough for you.”

“You say that I take money from gentlemen,” cried Miss Potter.

“If they’re fools enough to give it to you.”

“Ladies! ladies!” pleaded Miss Allen, but all in vain.

“I’ve never done the things you’ve done,” screamed Miss Potter.

“I’ve done?  I’ve done?  I ’ave my faults same as others, but I can say, I can that—­that I’ve never let a gentleman make love to me unless I’ve been properly introduced to him,” remarked her opponent virtuously.

“For shame!  For shame!” cried Miss Potter and Miss Allen together, as if the proprieties that they held most sacred had been ruthlessly and unnecessarily violated.

“No, that I h’ain’t,” continued irate Miss Impett.  “I’ve watched you when you didn’t know I was by and seen the way you’ve made eyes at gentlemen in evening dress.”

Much as Mavis was shocked at all she had heard, she was little prepared for what followed.  The next moment Miss Potter had sprung out of bed; with clenched fists, and features distorted by rage, she sprang to Miss Impett’s bedside.

“Say that again!” she screamed.

“I shan’t.”

“You daren’t!”

“I daren’t?”

“No, you daren’t.”

“What would you do if I did?”

“Say it and see.”