“It shows how intimate they are, their going like that to the butcher’s together. None of my girls would ever dream of taking a gentleman to do their household shopping,” said Mrs. Kendal with absolute truth. “I should think less of it, in a way, if Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter went to the theater, or even to the cinematograph, together. But when it comes to their going together to the butcher’s, I ask myself what it all means.”
Mrs. Kendal had not been content only to ask herself what it all meant. She had asked several other people as well, including her four daughters and her son.
“It means,” said Dolly, with her most uncompromisingly sensible expression, “that Mrs. Harter is trying to get up a flirtation with Captain Patch.”
“She’s old enough to be his mother, I should think,” said Aileen.
When the twins had made these scathing statements, I think they felt that the situation had been exhaustively analyzed. At any rate, although they thereafter talked round and round the subject with tireless persistency, the sum total of their observations never amounted to more than that Mrs. Harter was trying to get up a flirtation with Captain Patch and that she was old enough to be his mother.
I did not think it worth while to point out that twenty-eight cannot be the mother of twenty-six.
It was odd, and to me profoundly interesting, to compare the comments which the situation evoked.
Mary Ambrey, of course, made none, and was, I should imagine, almost the only person in Cross Loman of whom that could be said.
Sallie and Martyn, with their strange, passionless habits of dissection, were coldly and impersonally interested.
I remember one exposition of their views. The spirit of it impressed itself upon my consciousness so clearly that I can almost remember the letter.