"Senator Kent can tell you, madam, that we do not all dabble in mud or pitch."
Mr. Herriott leaned forward, and spoke more quickly than usual.
"She is afraid I might not swell the class of distinguished exceptions which you and Senator Kent represent. Aunt Trina, may I trouble you for a second cup of coffee and an extra lump of sugar?"
Beatrix had completed her inventory of Eglah's points of attraction, and now, as her eyes rested on the graceful figure daintily gowned in lilac muslin, the result annoyed her.
"Miss Kent, has your college training fitted you to believe all the marvellous tales these two wise scholars tell us; as, for instance, that this lovely spot—this suburb of paradise where we are sitting—was once buried for ages under ten thousand feet of glacial ice?"
"I am sorry to confess my course of study carried me only far enough to see the border land of a kingdom I never expect to explore. Unless one specializes, four years at college make no experts. You might as well ask a butterfly to classify all the blossoms it hovered over, or measure the depths of glaciers."
The professor pushed aside his cup, and looked at her.
"And why not? It can teach us infinitely more than its human, club-crazy sisters. My dear Miss Kent, we who are in bonds to science exact great accuracy even in the selection of metaphors, and you will pardon me if I rise to defend the usefulness of butterflies. On top of Mount Washington survives a colony of butterflies found nowhere else south of Arctic snows and ice; descendants of a family which retreated with the great glacier that once overflowed New Hampshire and left only the pinnacle of Mount Washington uncovered. When the Œneis household moved back to Labrador and Greenland, these silk-winged stragglers, flirting in corners, were abandoned by their chaperons, and for thousands of years their progeny have flitted around that stone crest to show us the depth of the glacier."
Professor Cleveden adjusted his eye-glasses and moved his chair so as to look straight at Miss Manning, who at once put up her lorgnette to probe his gold spectacles.
"Are you an enthusiastic club-woman?"