true that there were three sitting-rooms, besides
the garden and the battlements at San Salvatore, so that there would be
opportunities of withdrawal from Mrs. Wilkins; but it would be
disagreeable to Mrs. Fisher, for instance, if Mrs. Wilkins were
suddenly to assert that she saw Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher was dead; let
him remain so. She had no wish to be told he was walking about the
garden. The only reference she really wanted, for she was much too old
and firmly seated in her place in the world for questionable associates
to matter to her, was one with regard to Mrs. Wilkins's health. Was
her health quite normal? Was she an ordinary, everyday, sensible
woman? Mrs. Fisher felt that if she were given even one address she
would be able to find out what she needed. So she asked for
references, and her visitors appeared to be so much taken aback--Mrs.
Wilkins, indeed, was instantly sobered--that she added, "It is usual."

Mrs. Wilkins found her speech first. "But," she said "aren't we
the ones who ought to ask for some from you?"

And this seemed to Mrs. Arbuthnot too the right attitude. Surely
it was they who were taking Mrs. Fisher into their party, and not Mrs.
Fisher who was taking them into it?

For answer Mrs. Fisher, leaning on her stick, went to the
writing-table and in a firm hand wrote down three names and offered
them to Mrs. Wilkins, and the names were so respectable, more, they
were so momentous, they were so nearly august, that just to read them
was enough. The President of the Royal Academy, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Governor of the Bank of England--who would dare
disturb such personages in their meditations with inquires as to
whether a female friend of theirs was all she should be?

"They have know me since I was little," said Mrs. Fisher--
everybody seemed to have known Mrs. Fisher since or when she was
little.

"I don't think references are nice things at all between--between
ordinary decent women," burst out Mrs. Wilkins, made courageous by
being, as she felt, at bay; for she very well knew that the only
reference she could give without getting into trouble was Shoolbred,
and she had little confidence in that, as it would be entirely based on
Mellersh's fish. "We're not business people. We needn't distrust each
other--"

And Mrs. Arbuthnot said, with a dignity that yet was sweet, "I'm
afraid references do bring an atmosphere into our holiday plan that
isn't quite what we w