One evening a few days later I was coming out of my office at six o’clock when I noticed Everard Bone…I was thinking of hurrying past him as I was not very well dressed that day — I had had a ‘lapse’ and was hatless and stockingless in an old cotton dress and a cardigan. Mrs. Bonner would have been horrified at the idea of meeting a man in such an outfit. One should always start the day suitably dressed for anything, she had often told me. Anybody emergency might arise. Somebody — by which she meant a man — might suddenly ring up and ask you out to lunch.
— Excellent Women, chapter sixteen
