You begin your clam broth (such an "exquit" soup, as Ermyntrude would call
it), and the lady next you says she has been "just crazy" to meet you, and
heaps of nice things that make you pleased with yourself and ready to enjoy
your food. You are just going to say something civil in return, and get a
few words out, when your neighbour interrupts you with more nice things,
and stacks of questions, and remarks about herself, all rather
disconnected, and before you can speak again, the lady beyond, or even
across the table, has interpolated with a sentence beginning always like
this, "Now let me tell you something;" and long before she can get to the
end of that, the person at her side has interrupted her. And so it goes on.
It sounds as if I were telling you of another Mad Hatter's tea party,
Mamma, but it is not at all; and it is wonderful how much sense you can get
out of it, and what amusing and clever bright things they say, though at
the end you feel a little confused; and what with the smell of the
innumerable flowers and the steam heated rooms, and the cigarettes, I can't
think how they have wits enough left to play bridge all the afternoon, as
they do, with never a young man to wake them up.
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