“How do you mean?” she asked with an expression of great interest.
“You won’t mind me being frank?”
“Not one particle, Mauney.”
He unfolded his arms and leaned slowly forward, rubbing his cheek with his hand.
“I never knew I could get so darned worked up over a little thing,” he said, testily. “Your mother froze me in there. I’m beginning to think, Freda, that I can feel just about as snobbish as she does.”
“You said it, Mauney,” she whispered. “I’ve no sympathy at all for her. Please try to grasp that point right now. I told her about you, and she’s just been waiting to make you feel unwelcome.”
“She’s succeeded, too.”
“She succeeds in everything, but managing me,” Freda went on warmly. “Oh, I can’t, simply can’t tell you what I’ve had to put up with, Mauney. I don’t feel one-half as much at home here as I did at Gertrude’s. Listen. My mother—and I’m sorry I have to say it—is an inexcusable snob from the word go. Her ideas aren’t any more like mine than day is like night. So you can understand why I don’t spend much time in Lockwood.”
“Are you going back to Merlton this fall?”
“I don’t know.”