It was
not my business to tell this Swink person and her daughter that they
should be careful concerning matrimonial alliances. I would agree
with them that such intimation on my part was presumptuous and I had
no intention of making it. What I was going to do I did not know,
but it was necessary to see them, talk with them before any
suggestions could be made to Selwyn as to a tactful handling of an
embarrassing situation; and in obedience to this primary requisite I
was calling.
In their private parlor at the Melbourne, pompously furnished, and
bare of all things that make a room reflective of personality, Mrs.
Swink and her daughter were awaiting me on my arrival, and the moment
I met the former all the perversity of which I am possessed rose up
within me, and for the latter I was conscious of sympathy, based on
nothing save intuitive antipathy to her mother. Inwardly I warned
myself to behave, but I wasn't sure I was going to do it.
"Oh, how do you do!" Mrs. Swink, a fat, florid, frizzy person,
waddled toward me with out-stretched and bejeweled hands, and took
mine in hers.
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