"Shall I take your furs, m'lady?"
Edna parted with her last shred of calm, in some mysterious fashion, when the comfortable and eminently becoming weight was lifted from her shoulders.
"I am very tired, Mason," she remarked patiently.
"Yes, m'lady? It's rather tiring weather," said Mason woodenly.
"I don't know about that. But when one thinks a great deal about other people—their weakness and ingratitude and folly—it seems to wear one out, somehow."
"I've mended the blue tea-gown, m'lady. Shall I put it out?"
"No," said Edna, with most unwonted sharpness.
It seemed to her that Mason was a woman on whom it was extraordinarily difficult to make any impression. Edna sedulously "took an interest" in all her servants, and made a point of lending books to her own maid, but never had she met with one less responsive to her influence.
She compressed her lips slightly, and made the small, collected pause with which it was her custom to counter such rare tendencies to irritability as she ever experienced.
The instant's recollection was followed, as always, by a flow of larger, more serene charity, enveloping successfully even the recalcitrant Mason.