“What,” said the Countess, “are mumps?”
Bundle and Lady Coote started simultaneously to explain. Finally, between them, they managed it.
“I suppose Hungarian children have it?” asked Lady Coote.
“Eh?” said the Countess.
“Hungarian children. They suffer from it?”
“I do not know,” said the Countess. “How should I?”
Lady Coote looked at her in some surprise.
“But I understood that you worked—”
“Oh, that!” The Countess uncrossed her legs, took her cigarette holder from her mouth and began to talk rapidly.
“I will tell you some horrors,” she said. “Horrors that I have seen. Incredible! You would not believe!”
And she was as good as her word. She talked fluently and with a graphic power of description. Incredible scenes of starvation and misery were painted by her for the benefit of her audience. She spoke of Budapest shortly after the war and traced its vicissitudes to the present day. She was dramatic, but she was also, to Bundle’s mind, a little like a gramophone record. You turned her on, and there you were. Presently, just as suddenly, she would stop.
Lady Coote was thrilled to the marrow—that much was clear. She sat with her mouth slightly open and her large, sad, dark eyes fixed on the Countess. Occasionally, she interpolated a comment of her own.
“One of my cousins had three children burned to death. Awful, wasn’t it?”