The others smiled, except Mrs. Ranger.
"Poor Kate!" she said; "all you girls seem to dislike her somehow. Mrs. West was a somebody from Washington," she added, reflectively, as if she unconsciously sought in the girl's pedigree some explanation of her unpopularity.
"Is it so dreadful to come from Washington?" asked Miss Merrivale; and then wondered if she ought to have said it.
"It is not the coming from Washington," was Mrs. Frostwinch's reply, delivered in the same faintly satirical manner which she had maintained throughout the discussion; "it is the being merely a somebody instead of having a definite family name behind her."
"It is all very well for you to make fun of my old-fashioned notions,
Anna," Mrs. Ranger returned, good-naturedly. "You think just as I do."
"I should be sorry not to think as you do about everything," was the answer. "And, to be perfectly honest, I can't help being a little ashamed that a cousin of mine has gone on to the stage. She was always dreadfully headstrong."
"Has she talent?" asked Mrs. Staggchase.
"Yes, she has talent; but is anything short of genius an excuse for taking to the boards?"
"I wish I could act," put in Miss Dimmont, emphatically. "I'd go on to the stage in a minute."
Mrs. Ranger looked shocked and grieved as well.