Mrs. Dundridge was extravagant with boiling water. She bathed every day.
Her neighbours often commented on it. They saw her from their windows lugging the heavy tin bath up the steps to her back garden and tipping the milky water onto the lawn. The water from their own tin baths was grey, almost black sometimes.
And the things she hung on her washing line? Scraps of flesh-coloured satin, pale blue chemises, white leg-shaped stockings kicking about like girls in a burlesque show. She'd catch her death dressing like that. Where were the sensible white lisle vests, the fleecy liberty bodices, the voluminous bloomers, the knitted wool stockings?
She'd not got an ounce of spare flesh on her either, and that couldn't be good.