“Have to go, child? I should think you'd like to go. I never saw such a girl—never. Pa and me are just studying all the time to please you, and it seems as if—” And the old lady's voice broke down.
“Why, mother dear”—and the girl, with tears in her eyes, leaned over her and kissed her fondly, and stroked her hair—“you are just as good and sweet as you can be; and don't mind me; you know I get in moods sometimes.”
The old lady pulled her down and kissed her, and looked in her face with beseeching eyes.
“What an old frump the mother is!” was Mrs. Glow's comment to Stanhope, when she next met him; “but she is immensely amusing.”
“She is a kind-hearted, motherly woman,” replied King, a little sharply.
“Oh, motherly! Has it come to that? I do believe you are more than half gone. The girl is pretty; she has a beautiful figure; but my gracious! her parents are impossible—just impossible. And don't you think she's a little too intellectual for society? I don't mean too intellectual, of course, but too mental, don't you know—shows that first. You know what I mean.”
“But, Penelope, I thought it was the fashion now to be intellectual—go in for reading, and literary clubs, Dante and Shakespeare, and political economy, and all that.”
“Yes, I belong to three clubs. I'm going to one tomorrow morning. We are going to take up the 'Disestablishment of the English Church.' That's different; we make it fit into social life somehow, and it doesn't interfere. I'll tell you what, Stanhope, I'll take Miss Benson to the Town and County Club next Saturday.”