"Capable," asked Lance. "Who could remain capable, Mrs. Leighton, with a cold tap continually running freezing remarks down one's back. Don't you think it's a miracle she's alive?"
Mrs. Leighton preferred to remain on her smooth course of counsel.
"It never does to judge people like that," she exclaimed. "You do not know. To put it in a selfish manner, one day you may find the Clutterbucks being of more service to you than any one on earth."
She pulled at her knitting ball.
"You girls talk a great deal of romance and nonsense about people like the Dudgeons. Why don't you think something nice about that poor little Serpent for a change?"
The girls remembered not very long afterwards the prophetic nature of these remarks. That they should cultivate the Clutterbucks for any reason at all, however, seemed at that moment impossible.
Dr. Merryweather called the same afternoon.
It was one of the coincidences of life that he should immediately talk of the Clutterbucks.
"Know them?" he asked. "I think your husband does, doesn't he? Do you call on the wife at all?"
"No," answered Mrs. Leighton. "I never feel that I could get on with her very well either. Mr. Leighton meets the Professor and they talk a lot together, but it's quite away from domestic matters."