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By Root 1701 0

all events Mme Swann’s friends were impressed when they saw in her house a lady of whom they were accustomed to think only as in her own, in an inseparable setting of guests, in the midst of her little group which they were astonished to behold thus evoked, summarised, compressed into a single armchair in the bodily form of the Mistress, the hostess turned visitor, muffled in her cloak with its grebe trimming, as fluffy as the white furs that carpeted that drawing-room, embowered in which Mme Verdurin was a drawing-room in herself. The more timid among the women thought it prudent to retire, and using the plural, as people do when they mean to hint to the rest of the room that it is wiser not to tire a convalescent who is out of bed for the first time, “Odette,” they murmured, “we’re going to leave you.” They envied Mme Cottard, whom the Mistress called by her Christian name.

“Can I drop you anywhere?” Mme Verdurin asked her, unable to bear the thought that one of the faithful was going to remain behind instead of following her from the room.

“Oh, but this lady has been so very kind as to say she’ll take me,” replied Mme Cottard, not wishing to appear to be forgetting, when approached by a more illustrious personage, that she had accepted the offer which Mme Bontemps had made to drive her home behind her cockaded coachman. “I must say that I’m always specially grateful to the friends who are so kind as to take me with them in their vehicles. It’s a regular godsend to me who have no charioteer.”

“Especially,” broke in the Mistress, hardly daring to say anything, since she knew Mme Bontemps slightly and had just invited her to her Wednesdays, “as at Mme de Crécy’s house you’re not very near home. Oh, good gracious, I shall never get into the habit of saying Mme Swann!” It was a recognised joke in the little clan, among those who were not over-endowed with wit, to pretend that they could never grow used to saying “Mme Swann”: “I’ve been so accustomed to saying Mme de Crécy that I nearly went wrong again!” Only Mme Verdurin, when she spoke to Odette, was not content with the nearly, but went wrong on purpose.

“Don’t you feel afraid, Odette, living out in the wilds like this? I’m sure I shouldn’t feel at all comfortable, coming home after dark. Besides, it’s so damp. It can’t be at all good for your husband’s eczema. You haven’t rats in the house, I hope!” “Oh, dear no. What a horrid idea!” “That’s a good thing; I was told you had. I’m glad to know it’s not true, because I have a perfect horror of the creatures, and I should never have come to see you again. Good-bye, my dear child, we shall meet again soon; you know what a pleasure it is to me to see you. You don’t know how to arrange chrysanthemums,” she added as she prepared to leave the room, Mme Swann having risen to escort her. “They are Japanese flowers; you must arrange them the same way as the Japanese.”

“I do not agree with Mme Verdurin, although she is the fount of wisdom to me in all things! There’s no one like you, Odette, for finding such lovely chrysanthemums, or chrysanthema rather, for it seems that’s what we ought to call them now,” declared Mme Cottard as soon as the Mistress had shut the door behind her.

“Dear Mme Verdurin is not always very kind about other people’s flowers,” said Odette sweetly. “Whom do you go to, Odette,” asked Mme Cottard, to forestall any further criticism of the Mistress. “Lemaître? I must confess, the other day in Lemaître’s window I saw a lovely pink shrub which made me commit the wildest extravagance.” But modesty forbade her to give any more precise details as to the price of the shrub, and she said merely that the Professor, “and you know, he’s not at all a quick-tempered man,” had “flown off the handle” and told her that she “didn’t know the value of money.”

“No, no, I’ve no regular florist except Debac.” “Me too,” said Mme Cottard, “but I confess that I forsake him now and then for Lachaume.” “Oh, you’re unfaithful to him with Lachaume, are you? I must tell him that,” replied Odette, always anxious to show her wit, and