Lady Paton’s smile went from one to the other.
“You have always teased Michael, Camelia, and he has always been so patient with you.”
“Every one is patient with me, because I am a good girl. ‘Be good, sweet maid—’ I believe in a moral universe,” and Camelia over her mother’s head wrinkled up her nose roguishly as she made the edifying statement. “Mamma,” she added, “where is my flock this morning? I fancied that you were shepherding some of them. I want to trot them out before Mr. Perior. I want to study his expression as Sir Harry and Mr. Merriman present themselves. Sir Harry the mere superlative of Mr. Merriman’s fatuity. I imagine that by some biological adaptation of function they use their brains for digestive purposes, since I am sure they never think with them.”
Lady Paton took refuge from a painful recognition of the inhospitable nature of these remarks in a vague smile. Lady Paton had a faculty for misunderstanding when either misunderstanding or disapproval was necessary. If Camelia hoped by her brisk personalities to shock her former preceptor she failed signally, for laughing appreciatively he asked, “And for what purpose were these latest sports of evolution imported?”
“Purpose! Could one pin a purpose to such aimless beings? They came because I like to have beautiful things about me, and, in their way, they are beautiful. Then, too, with a plant-like persistency they turn to the sun, and I do not flatter myself in owning that I am their sun. It would have been cruel to deny them the opportunity of basking.”
“The hunting, dancing, yachting species, I suppose.”
“Yes; their lives comprise a few more movements, but very few. It is a mere sort of rhythmic necessity.”
Perior laughed again, and his eyes met hers, as she leaned above her mother’s chair, in quite a twinkling mood.
Mary, near the window, paused in her stitching to look at them both with a seemingly bovine contemplation.
“And who are your other specimens?” asked Perior, less conscious perhaps than was Camelia of the purely dual nature of the conversation. She enjoyed this little display before him, and her enjoyment was emphasized by the presence of two alien listeners, it defined so well the fundamental intellectual sympathy.