Instinct had taken her to the root of the whole difference between the two generations in the family. Instinct took Edith to the same spot in her reply.
"I think I have. But, on the other hand, I wonder if a mother has the faintest idea of her children's ambitions for themselves."
Following an outflanking movement, Mrs. Collingham threw her line a little farther.
"It's curious how, as your father and I approach middle age, we feel that you and Bob are going to disappoint us."
"I'm sure I speak for Bob as well as for myself when I say that we wouldn't disappoint you willingly. It's only that the things we want are so different."
"Ours—your father's and mine—are simple and natural."
"That's the way Bob's and mine seem to us."
She was in a tennis costume carelessly worn and not very fresh. A weatherbeaten Panama pulled down to shade her eyes gave a touch of cowboy picturesqueness to an ensemble already picturesque rather than pretty or beautiful. Leaning nonchalantly against the high, carved back of a teakwood chair, the figure had a leopard grace to which the owner seemed indifferent. Indifference, boredom, dissatisfaction focused the expression of the delicate, irregular features to a wistful longing as far as possible from the mother's brisk self-approval. All this was emphasized by a pair of restless, intelligent eyes, of which one was blue and the other brown.
The mother turned round with an air of expostulation.
"I'm sure I can't see what you want to make of your life. You seem to have no ideals, not any more than Bob. You're not pretty, but you're not ugly; and you've a kind of witchiness most pretty girls have to do without. If you'd only dress with some decency and make the best of yourself, you could take as well as any other girl."