"The worst of it is," said Fanny, rolling her eyes and not listening, "that they take them off and leave them in the dressing room. They say that at the Brownes' the other evening there was a pile that high."
Still, in spite of her disapproval, Fanny's head was not so permanently bowed this time, because every mother in Jefferson was in the same situation. But craps struck Fanny a shrewder blow, because her child, Norma, was a conspicuous offender here, whereas little Evie, her sister's child, didn't care for craps. She said it wasn't amusing.
In order to decide the point Aunt Georgy asked Norma to teach her the game, and they were thus engaged when Mr. Gordon, the hollow-cheeked young clergyman, came to pay his first parochial visit. He said he wasn't at all shocked, and turned to Evie, who was sitting demurely behind the tea table eager to give him a cup of Aunt Georgy's excellent tea.
There was something a little mid-Victorian about Evie, and the only blot on Aunt Georgy's perfect liberalism was that in her heart she preferred her to the more modern nieces. Evie parted her thick light-brown hair in the middle and had a little pointed chin, like a picture in an old annual or a flattered likeness of Queen Victoria as a girl. She was small and decidedly pretty, though not a beauty like her large, rollicking, black-haired cousin Norma.
Norma's love affairs—if they were love affairs, and whether they were or not was a topic often discussed about the blue satin sofa—were carried on with the utmost candor. Suddenly one day it would become evident that Norma was dancing, golfing, motoring with a new young man. Everybody would report to Aunt Gregory the number of hours a day that he and Norma spent together, and Aunt Gregory would say to Norma, "Are you in love with him, Norma?" and Norma would answer "Yes" or "No" or "I'm trying to find out."
"There's no mystery about this generation," Fanny would say.
"Why should there be?" Norma would say, and would stamp out again, and would be heard hailing the young man of the minute, "We're considered minus on romance, Bill"; and ten of them would get into a car intended for four and drive away, looking like a basketful of puppies.
But about little Evie's love affairs there was some mystery. Aunt Georgy did not know that Evie had ever spoken to the mayor—a middle-aged banker of great wealth—and yet one day when he came to tell Miss Hadley about the museum he told her instead about how Evie had refused to marry him, and how unhappy he was. The nice young clergyman, too, who preached so interestingly and pleased the parish in every detail, was thinking of getting himself transferred to a city in California because the sight of an attentive but unattainable Evie in the front pew every Sunday almost broke his heart.
Aunt Georgy exonerated Evie from blame as far as the mayor was concerned, but she wasn't so sure about the Reverend Mr. Gordon.
"Evie," she said, "did you try to enmesh that nice-looking man of God?"