Mrs Tower gave a little sniff.
'And have you arranged with the admiral that if you want your liberty neither should put any hindrance in the way of the other?
'I suggested it,' Jane answered with composure.
'But the admiral says he knows a good thing when he sees it and he won't want to marry anyone else, and if anyone wants to marry me – he has eight twelve-inch guns on his flagship and he'll discuss the matter at short range.'
She gave us a look through her eyeglass which even the fear of Mrs Tower's wrath could not prevent me from laughing at.
'I think the admiral's a very passionate man.'
Mrs Tower indeed gave me an angry frown.
'I never thought you funny, Jane,' she said.
'I never understood why people laughed at the things you said.'
'I never thought I was funny myself, Marion,' smiled Jane, showing her bright, regular teeth.
'I am glad to leave London before too many people come round to our opinion.'
'I wish you'd tell me the secret of your astonishing success,' I said.
She turned to me with that bland, homely look I knew so well.
'You know, when I married Gilbert and settled in London and people began to laugh at what I said no one was more surprised than I was.
I'd said the same things for thirty years and no one ever saw anything to laugh at.
I thought it must be my clothes or my bobbed hair or my eyeglass.
Then I discovered it was because I spoke the truth.
It was so unusual that people thought it humorous.
One of these days someone else will discover the secret and when people habitually tell the truth of course there'll be nothing funny in it.'
'And why am I the only person not to think it funny?' asked Mrs Tower.
Jane hesitated a little as though she were honestly searching for a satisfactory explanation.
'Perhaps you don't know the truth when you see it, Marion dear,' she answered in her mild good-natured way.
It certainly gave her the last word.
I felt that Jane would always have the last word.
She was priceless.