,
and it was not one to which she could very well draw her attention;
not, that is, without being too fatuous to live. She tried to hope
that Mr. Wilkins would be a wonderful exception to the dreadful rule.
If only he were, she would be so much obliged to him that she believed
she might really quite like him.

But--she had misgivings. Suppose he hung about her so that she
was driven from her lovely top garden; suppose the light in Mrs.
Wilkins's funny, flickering face was blown out. Scrap felt she would
particularly dislike this to happen to Mrs. Wilkins's face, yet she had
never in her life met any wives, not any at all, who had been able to
understand that she didn't in the least want their husbands. Often she
had met wives who didn't want their husbands either, but that made them
none the less indignant if they thought somebody else did, and none the
less sure, when they saw them hanging round Scrap, that she was trying
to get them. Trying to get them! The bare thought, the bare
recollection of these situations, filled her with a boredom so extreme
that it instantly sent her to sleep again.

When she woke up she went on with Mr. Wilkins.

Now if, thought Scrap, Mr. Wilkins were not an exception and
behaved in the usual way, would Mrs. Wilkins understand, or would it
just simply spoil her holiday? She seemed quick, but would she be
quick about just this? She seemed to understand and see inside one,
but would she understand and see inside one when it came to Mr.
Wilkins?

The experienced Scrap was full of doubts. She shifted her feet
on the parapet; she jerked a cushion straight. Perhaps she had better
try and explain to Mrs. Wilkins, during the days still remaining before
the arrival--explain in a general way, rather vague and talking at
large--her attitude towards such things. She might also expound to her
her peculiar dislike of people's husbands, and her profound craving to
be, at least for this one month, let alone.

But Scrap had her doubts about this too. Such talk meant a
certain familiarity, meant embarking on a friendship with Mrs. Wilkins;
and if, after having embarked on it and faced the peril it contained of
too much Mrs. Wilkins, Mr. Wilkins should turn out to be artful--and
people did get very artful when they were set on anything--and manage
after all to slip through into the top garden, Mrs. Wilkins might
easily believe she had been taken in, and that she, Scrap, was
deceitful. Dece