MRS TARLETON. Oh no: we all do that: thats only human nature. But
you know theyve no notion of decency. I shall never forget the first
day I spent with a marchioness, two duchesses, and no end of Ladies
This and That. Of course it was only a committee: theyd put me on to
get a big subscription out of John. I'd never heard such talk in my
life. The things they mentioned! And it was the marchioness that
started it.

HYPATIA. What sort of things?

MRS TARLETON. Drainage!! She'd tried three systems in her castle;
and she was going to do away with them all and try another. I didnt
know which way to look when she began talking about it: I thought
theyd all have got up and gone out of the room. But not a bit of it,
if you please. They were all just as bad as she. They all had
systems; and each of them swore by her own system. I sat there with
my cheeks burning until one of the duchesses, thinking I looked out of
it, I suppose, asked me what system I had. I said I was sure I knew
nothing about such things, and hadnt we better change the subject.
Then the fat was in the fire, I can tell you. There was a regular
terror of a countess with an anaerobic system; and she told me,
downright brutally, that I'd better learn something about them before
my children died of diphtheria. That was just two months after I'd
buried poor little Bobby; and that was the very thing he died of, poor
little lamb! I burst out crying: I couldnt help it. It was as good
as telling me I'd killed my own child. I had to go away; but before I
was out of the door one of the duchesses--quite a young woman--began
talking about what sour milk did in her inside and how she expected to
live to be over a hundred if she took it regularly. And me listening
to her, that had never dared to think that a duchess could have