“Not so very strange, I fancy,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop. “One’s circle is apt to be so far removed.”
“Yes?” said Miss Greene, with that rising inflection. “Then you can not have lived in Chicago long?”
“All my life,” snapped Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop.
“So long as that!” said Miss Greene with eyes that stared incredibility. Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop actually colored.
“You are enjoying your visit to Springfield, I trust? You have seen the Lincoln Monument and the Homestead? How very interesting they must be! And the Legislature offers novelty; don’t you find it so?” She gathered her skirts as if to withdraw. But Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop achieved a smile.
“We have not enjoyed the pleasures of sight-seeing. On the contrary, we came to appear before the Senate,” she said.
Miss Greene surveyed her critically, with that look in which one woman inspects another woman’s attire. She then extended her critical scrutiny to the dress of the others.
“To be sure!” she said, “I should have known.”
The ladies again exchanged glances. Mrs. Barbourton plainly could not bear that their position should be equivocal. She doubtless had her little vainglorious wish to have their success known.