Lady Swindon looked thoroughly disappointed.
“Oh, I did hope it was going to be spiritualism,” she said. “I do automatic writing every evening, unless I am really tired—because it’s no use then, is it?—and sometimes it says the most extraordinary things. Haven’t you ever tried it? It is quite fascinating, especially if you use a stylograph pen, which seems to go easier. And Swindon and I have heard the most awful raps—like the postman. But if it is not going to be the craze I shall give it up. One has no time for a private hobby: one has to ride the public hobby all the time. Are you sure you are right? Think of the Zigzags. I never can remember their name. And what about Christian Science? I hear it is spreading tremendously. Or deep breathing?”
The smile on Alice Yardly’s face widened and deepened as she heard the sacred word. But at this moment she was being talked to, and could not join in with her long and lucid explanations, though the scientific statement of Being—cause, source, origin—was trembling on her lips.
“I have tried deep breathing,” said Catherine, “but there really isn’t time. You can’t do anything else while you are doing it; you can’t talk even, because your mouth is closed, and you breathe in through one nostril and breathe out through the other. Perhaps it will be Christian Science, though, do you know, I think some of it is too serious and sensible to be a fad, whereas the other half is too silly. On that side talk to Alice, or read what Mark Twain says. But on the serious side—the side that is sensible—get Maud to tell you about the typhoid up at Achnaleesh and her Mr. Cochrane.”
“Her Mr. Cochrane?” asked Lady Swindon, with the alertness of the world.
But the unconsciousness of the world, no less important an equipment, answered her.
“Oh, only ‘hers’ because she told me about him; no other reason. Thurso and she were up there together.”
“And Thurso—isn’t he here?”
“Oh yes,” said Catherine, “but tea-time isn’t his hour. Tea-time is women’s hour; it corresponds to men’s after-dinner talk when we have gone upstairs.”
“But we have women’s hour then, too,” said Lady Swindon. “I suppose we have got more to say?”