"Yes, just the same," she said.
CHAPTER VII.
There was silence for a little while. An hour had passed since they began to talk, but it was still short of midnight, and the hansoms and motors still swept about the square like a throng of sonorous fireflies. Just opposite a big house flared with lit windows, and the sound of the band came loudly across the open space, a little mellowed by the distance, but with the rhythm of its music intact.
"Oh, I could get into a ball-dress and go and dance now for lightness of heart," said Jeannie. "But I won't; I will do something much nicer, and that is I will hear from you the news of your year. Now it is 'you next.' Tell me all you have done and been and thought of. And then I shall want to know all about Gladys and all about Daisy. I talked to Daisy—or, rather, she talked to me—for half an hour this afternoon, but I don't think she got absolutely 'home' in her talk. I had the impression that she was showing me the dining-room and drawing-room, so to speak. She did not sit with me in my bedroom or in hers as we are sitting now. The only talk worth calling a talk is when you put your feet on the fender and tuck up your skirt and put the lights out—figuratively, that is. One must be taken into privacy. Daisy wasn't very private. You have got to be. Now, dear Alice, about yourself first."
Alice sighed again—not appreciatively this time.
"There's very little to say. I am rather lazier than I was, and Daisy and Gladys—Daisy chiefly—make all arrangements. I send them out to dances alone, because they always find a chaperon of some kind; and you know, Jeannie, I don't like hot rooms and supper. I weave plenty of plans still, and they mostly come off, but I don't go to superintend the execution of them. I don't think I have any very private life; if I had you should at once be admitted. I think a great deal about the people I like best. I try occasionally to straighten out their affairs for them. I want all girls to marry suitable men, and all men to marry suitable girls. I think, indeed, that the only change in me has been that I take a rather wider view than I used to of the word suitable. You see, I am an optimist, and I can't help it; and I believe that most people are kind and nice. Oh, I don't say that it is not great fun being critical and seeing their absurdities and their faults, but I fancy that if one wants to increase the sum of comfort and happiness in the world, it is better to spend one's time in trying to see their charms and their virtues. Dear me, what dreadful commonplaces I am saying! However, that is my very truthful history for the last year: I want to make people jolly and comfortable and happy, but, if possible, without standing about in extremely hot rooms with the band playing into one's ear at the distance of three inches."
Jeannie laughed.
"I don't think that is at all a bad history," she said. "That is just the sort of history which I hope will be written of me by-and-by. Oh, Alice, I don't want any more troubles and crises—I don't! I don't!—even if they are good for one. Sometimes I wonder if there is some envious power that is always on the look-out, some Nemesis with a dreadful wooden eye that waits till we are happy and then puts out a great bony hand and knocks us over or squeezes us till we scream. 'Oh, Nemesis,' I feel inclined to say, 'do look the other way for a little bit.' Yes, I just want Nemesis to leave my friends and me alone for a little."
"Ah! but Nemesis is looking the other way with great fixedness, it seems to me," said Lady Nottingham. "She may be dabbing away at other people, but you must be just, Jeannie; she hasn't been dabbing at any of us lately."
"Oh, hush! Don't say it so loud," said Jeannie. "She may hear and turn round."