III
When on the following Sunday morning Farraday drove up to the house, Mary was delighted to find Constance Elliot in the tonneau.
“Theodore has begun golfing again, now that the snow has gone,” she greeted her, “so that I am a grass widow on holidays as well as all the week.”
“Why don't you learn to play, too?” Mary asked, as they settled themselves, Stefan sitting in front with Farraday, who was driving.
“Oh, for your English feet, my dear!” sighed Constance. “They are bigger than mine—I dare say so, as I wear fours—but you can walk on them. I was brought up to be vain of my extremities, and have worn two-inch heels too long to be good for more than a mile. The links would kill me. Besides,” she sighed again prettily, “dear Theodore is so much happier without me.”
“How can you, Constance!” objected Mary.
“Yes, my dear,” went on the other, her beautiful little hands, which she seldom gloved, playing with the inevitable string of jade, “the result of modern specialization. Theodore is a darling, and in theory a Suffragist, but he has practised the matrimonial division of labor so long that he does not know what to do with the woman out of the home.”
“This is Queensborough Bridge,” she pointed out in a few minutes, as they sped up a huge iron-braced incline. “It looks like eight pepper-castors on a grid, surmounted by bayonets, but it is very convenient.”