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M. Grigoroff entered, and Miss
Villars was, with some difficulty, re-translating into her mother
tongue a German translation of King Lear .
    “Come right in, M. Grigoroff,” said Miss Villars, as the Romanian
gentleman entered.
     
His pince-nez shimmered in the light as he made them an
inclusive bow, and a smile tucked up his upper lip under his nose.
He made gestures and little noises of diffidence and gratitude. “Do
sit down,” said Mrs. Hobson, and Miss Pym inspected her fingernails
and fluttered her eyelids. 3
     
“I expect M. Grigoroff would like to put his feet near the
radiator,” said Miss Villars understandingly. Leaning forward, she
repeated the remark in French. Miss Villars came from Boston. So
they made room for him, and he sat down, beaming at them and
rubbing his knees.
     
Mrs. Hobson’s nose had a fine edge to it, as though it were an
axe, but the rest of her was comfortably rotund. She bent forward
and plucked some strands of mauve wool off her skirt, and arranged
the front of her blouse. “This is another muffler,” she said, shaking
out her work. “I finished the grey one I was beginning on Friday.”
     
“Oh ye-es?” said M. Grigoroff, admiringly.
     
“Now, M. Grigoroff, do you know German? Savez-vous parler – ”
     
“Oh no-o, a leetle.”
     
“I guess that means a lot,” said Miss Villars firmly. She felt that
she had a great deal in common with M. Grigoroff, they were both
such cosmopolitans. She did not wish to exclude the others, but
how much easier it would have been to talk in French! “You speak
well, German?”
     
“Oh ye-es, a leetle.”
     
“I’m afraid M. Grigoroff’s feeling the cold,” said Miss Pym
obliquely. She never made advances to men. The colour spread
softly from her pretty pink cheeks to her ears, peeping through her
fluffy hair, and down to the tip of her nose. She looked round under
her lashes, and caught M. Grigoroff’s eye, and the pink deepened.
M. Grigoroff decided that she might not be as old as she had
looked. It was a pity English ladies did not seem to marry. “Are you
cold?” she inquired, boldly.
     
“Oh, ye-es,” said M. Grigoroff, nodding and smiling.
     
“M. Grigoroff knows quite a lot about knitting, don’t you?” said
Mrs. Hobson, evidently referring back. “He was telling me about the
shawls his mother used to make in Romania, weren’t you?”
     
“Ye-es?”
     
“ Shawl ,” she raised her voice and made an expansive movement of
wrapping something round her shoulders. “Shawl!” she shouted.
     
Miss Villars did not knit. “When I was in Rome,” she said – “ une
fois, pendant que je suis restée à Rome 4 . . . I used to know two or three
Romanians. A charming Baroness. Connaissez-vous – ?”
     
“Oh ye-es. But it is so triste – ”
     
“Oh, not triste , M. Grigoroff. Antique – the dolours of antiquity.
Have you read – est-ce que vous avez lu 5 – Do forgive me,” she said
aside to the others, and continued the conversation rapidly in
French.
     
It became evident that Miss Pym did not like Miss Villars. She
raised her eyebrows expressively at Mrs. Hobson, moved her knees
pettishly, and dropped her scissors. M. Grigoroff swooped sideways
after them, it was like a dive.
     
“Oh, how kind! No, over there . . . under the radiator . . . No,
more to the right . . . let me . . . oh well . . . Thank you !”
     
He straightened his pince-nez and looked at her intensely
through them, handing her the scissors. “Thank you,” she repeated,
taking the scissors, and meditatively snipping with them at the air.
“I hope you’re not cold any more now?”
     
“Oh ye-es,” he smiled.
     
Miss Villars cleared her throat. “ Et quand je serai revenue de Florence ...”
she continued. 6
     
“Would you mind, would you mind very much if I were to try this
muffler on you, just to try? Yes, muffler! ” She shook it out. “I want to
see if it will go round twice and tie in a knot.” While he was