“Oh! my dear,” said Miss Marple. “ I think married ones are the worst. Remember poor Mollie Carter.”
“Married men living apart from their wives are, of course, notorious,” said Miss Wetherby.
“And even some of the ones living with their wives,” murmured Miss Marple. “I remember—”
I interrupted these unsavoury reminiscences.
“But surely,” I said, “in these days a girl can take a post in just the same way as a man does.”
“To come away to the country? And stay at the same hotel?” said Mrs. Price Ridley in a severe voice.
Miss Wetherby murmured to Miss Marple in a low voice:
“And all the bedrooms on the same floor. …”
Miss Hartnell, who is weather-beaten and jolly and much dreaded by the poor, observed in a loud, hearty voice:
“The poor man will be caught before he knows where he is. He’s as innocent as a babe unborn, you can see that.”
Curious what turns of phrase we employ. None of the ladies present would have dreamed of alluding to an actual baby till it was safely in the cradle, visible to all.
“Disgusting, I call it,” continued Miss Hartnell, with her usual tactlessness. “The man must be at least twenty-five years older than she is.”
Three female voices rose at once making disconnected remarks about the Choir Boys’ Outing, the regrettable incident at the last Mothers’