“Yes, you are right,” assented Tommy, complacently. “She was a Bodkin, and—well—you know—Bodkins are Bodkins.” He submitted to the sui generical fashion in which one is obliged to refer to certain Boston families.
“Ah, you know a Bodkin, you know the kind of woman I mean,” he went on dramatically. “She’s the woman who lies awake at night—dreading your arrival, for her only clew to your identity is a perfunctory letter of introduction informing her that you are from a place of which she never heard. She is the woman who, when you call, roosts discreetly at the extreme end of a long sofa and extends a series of well-worn social ‘feelers,’ while her daughter makes tea in a masterly, unemotional way, and supposes, from time to time, ‘that you graduate this year,’ or ‘that you must find Cambridge dull after—after—’”
“Those are some of the local formulae for tact,” broke in Charlie Bolo.
“The other one—the suburban—was truly a most loathely creature,” continued Tommy in the harsh incisive voice that made what he said so difficult to forget. “She didn’t even give me tea; and you know how many clever things I can say about tea.” His smile was an impertinent challenge. “My Aunt got me into it,” he half yawned; “there was, I believe, some reason why I ought to go, and as it wasn’t a very urgent one—I went. The thing actually seemed glad to see me.”
“Imagine,” laughed Dickey Dawson cautiously, for he was learning how to regulate his spontaneity when talking to fellows like Tommy and Charlie Bolo and Bigelow, and had come to believe that he laughs best who laughs least.
“Yes, and she’d been abroad and seen the Passion Play, or the Lakes of Killarney, or some such thing, and was altogether a most impossible sort of a person. I fancy she is what they call ‘a superior woman’ in this country—they don’t exist anywhere else, I believe.”
Dickey Dawson’s throat was too sore to admit of his talking much himself, and as Tommy was there to entertain him he said:
“Curse her more specifically.”
“Oh, what is the use?” Tommy shrugged his shoulders. “Besides, I couldn’t very well, as the superior woman is not a human being, but a type. You’ve certainly seen lots of her—there is no man fortunate enough not to have. They appeal to the imagination of—”
“Of the unimaginative, who always marry them,” interrupted Charlie Bolo.