Having subjected the faces within her range to her half-unconscious judgment, and passed them with varying degrees of credit, Miss Delmer, for lack of anything better to do, read the advertisements and exhortations over the windows. With satisfaction she noted that she had seen all the advertised plays. She absorbed such temporal maxims and eternal truths as "Let Mr. Mustard mix your bath," "God is not mocked," and the terrifying utterances of the Safety-if-Possible Council, "Is it safe? That is the question. No. That is the answer." "If you hope to achieve safety in a street aero (1) Do not alight before the aero does. (2) Do not attempt to jump up into an aero in motion." Then a picture: "A will be killed because he is standing immediately beneath a descending aero bus. B will be killed because he and others like him have shaken the nerve of the aviator." A series of warnings which left one certain that, wherever one might achieve safety, it would not be in, or anywhere at all near, a street aero. That, probably, is the object. In the old days it was the motor bus that was thus made a thing of terror by the princes of the nether world. Now, even as then, their efforts met with success, and the tubes were filled with a panic-stricken mob.
Ivy Delmer, taking an empty seat, saw Miss Grammont at the other side of the carriage. Miss Grammont had the _New Statesman_ and the _Tatler_ and was reading one of them. She was partial to both, which was characteristic of her attitude towards life. She was one of those who see no reason why an intelligent interest in the affairs of the world should be incompatible with a taste for Eve. She enjoyed both classical concerts and new revues. She might be called a learned worldling. Ivy Delmer was rather shy of her, because of her manner, which could be supercilious, because of her reputed cleverness, and because of her position at the Ministry, which was a long way above Ivy's. On the other hand, her clothes made one feel at home; they showed skill and interest; she had not that air of the dowd which some people who have been to college have, and which is so estranging to normal people.
Kitty Grammont, something of the elegant rake, something of the gamin, something of the adventuress, something of the scholar, with innocent amber-brown eyes gazing ingenuously from under long black lashes, a slightly cynical mouth, a small, smooth, rounded, child's face, a travelled manner, and an excellent brain, was adequately, as people go, equipped for the business of living. She had seen some life, in a past which, if chequered, had not lacked its gaiety, meant to see much more, in a future which she did not foresee clearly but which she intended should be worthy of her, and was seeing enough to go on with in a present which, though at moments it blackly bored her (she was very susceptible to boredom), was on the whole decidedly entertaining.