Wilkins's actions at that moment.
"Then why should she say she has?" asked Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"Because she is still trying to be polite. Soon she won't try,
when the place has got more into her--she'll really be it. Without
trying. Naturally."
"Lotty, you see," explained Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling to Mrs.
Fisher, who sat waiting with a stony patience for her next course,
delayed because Mrs. Wilkins would go on trying to eat the maccaroni,
which must be less worth eating than ever now that it was cold; "Lotty,
you see, has a theory about this place--"
But Mrs. Fisher had no wish to hear any theory of Mrs. Wilkins's.
"I am sure I don't know," she interrupted, looking severely at
Mrs. Wilkins, "why you should assume Lady Caroline is not telling the
truth."
"I don't assume--I know." said Mrs. Wilkins.
"And pray how do you know?" asked Mrs. Fisher icily, for Mrs.
Wilkins was actually helping herself to more maccaroni, offered her
officiously and unnecessarily a second time by Francesca.
"When I was out there just now I saw inside her."
Well, Mrs. Fisher wasn't going to say anything to that; she
wasn't going to trouble to reply to downright idiocy. Instead she
sharply rapped the little table-gong by her side, though there was
Francesca standing at the sideboard, and said, for she would wait no
longer for her next course, "Serve me.
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