'Confusion to the puritans,' she cried, and drained her glass. Snoo and Poo were fighting for scraps, for Duckie was already getting uncertain in her aim. Lissa and Zoé, like nymphs teasing Bacchus, were pelting her with plum stones, but she seemed quite unconscious of their pranks. They had some difficulty in getting her into the boudoir for coffee and liqueurs; once on the sofa she tried to go to sleep. Her companions roused her, however; the scent of coffee, acrid and stimulating, stung their nostrils; the liqueurs shone wickedly, green and golden in their glass bottles; talk became more individual, more reminiscent. Here and there a joke shot up like a rocket or stuck quivering in Duckie's placid flanks. 'Well Vic,' said Zoé, 'you are very well _installée_.' She slowly emptied of cigarette smoke her expanded cheeks and surveyed the comfortable little room. 'Did you do it yourself?' asked Lissa. 'It must have cost you a lot of money.' 'Oh, I didn't pay.' Victoria was either getting less reticent or the liqueur was playing her tricks. 'I began with a man who set me up here,' she added; 'he was . . . he died suddenly' she went on more cautiously. 'Oh!' Zoé's eyebrows shot up. 'That's what I call luck. But why do you not have a flat? It is cheaper.' 'Yes, but more inconvenient,' said Lissa. 'Ah, Vic. I do envy you. You don't know. We're always in trouble. We are moving every month.' 'But why?' asked Victoria. 'Why must you move?' 'Turn you out. Neighbours talk and then the landlord's conscience begins to prick him,' grumbled Duckie from the sofa. 'Oh, I see,' said Victoria. 'But when they turn you out what do you do?' 'Go somewhere else, softy,' said Duckie. 'But then what good does it do?' All the women laughed. 'Law, who cares?' said Duckie. 'I dunno.' 'It is perfectly simple,' began Zoé in her precise foreign English. 'You see the landlord he will not let flats to ladies. When the police began to watch it would cause him _des ennuis_. So he lets to a gentleman who sublets the flats, you see? When the trouble begins, he doesn't know.' 'But what about the man who sublets?' asked the novice. 'Him? Oh, he's gone when it begins,' said Lissa. 'But they arrest the hall porter.' 'Justice must have its way, I see,' said Victoria. 'What you call justice,' grumbled Duckie, 'I call it damned hard lines.' For some minutes Victoria discussed the housing problem with the fat jolly woman. Duckie was in a cheerful mood. One could hardly believe, when one looked at her puffy pink face, that she had seen fifteen years of trouble. 'Landladies,' she soliloquised, 'it's worse. You take my tip Vic, you steer clear of them. You pay as much for a pigsty as a man pays for a palace. If you do badly they chuck you out and stick to your traps and what can you do? You don't call a policeman. If you do well, they raise the rent, steal your clothes, charge you key money, and don't give 'em any lip if you don't want a man set at you. Oh, Lor!'