It was enough to root anybody. Lady Caroline shaking hands with
what evidently, if he had had clothes on, would have been Mrs.
Wilkins's husband, and both of them conversing just as if--
Then Scrap became aware of Mrs. Fisher. She turned to her at once. "Do
let me," she said gracefully, "introduce Mr. Mellersh-Wilkins. He has
just come. This," she added, turning to Mr. Wilkins, "is Mrs. Fisher."
And Mr. Wilkins, nothing if not courteous, reacted at once to the
conventional formula. First he bowed to the elderly lady in the
doorway, then he crossed over to her, his wet feet leaving footprints
as he went, and having got to her he politely held out his hand.
"It is a pleasure," said Mr. Wilkins in his carefully modulated
voice, "to meet a friend of my wife's."
Scrap melted away down into the garden.
Chapter 15
The strange effect of this incident was that when they met that
evening at dinner both Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline had a singular
feeling of secret understanding with Mr. Wilkins. He could not be to
them as other men. He could not be to them as he would have been if
they had met him in his clothes. There was a sense of broken ice; they
felt at once intimate and indulgent; almost they felt to him as nurses
do--as those feel who have assisted either patients or young children
at their baths.
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