[CHAPTER III]
It was about a fortnight later that Katherine got Matilda to meet her at a Lyons' popular café for tea on a Wednesday afternoon. Livingstone and Devereux had given her a half holiday, being on country business bent; and having matured her plans, and having set fresh schemes in train, she thought she might as well communicate them to the one sister who mattered to her. Matilda loved an excuse to "get up to town," and had come in her best hat, with smiling face. Katherine was always very generous to her, though she was no more careless about money than she was about other things.
"It is all very well, Tild," she said, in her deep voice, after they had spoken upon indifferent subjects for a while. "But I am tired of it. I am absolutely tired of it, so there! I am tired of Liv and Dev—tired of the hateful old click of the machine with no change of work—I am tired of seeing the people of another class through the glass screen—and I mean to get out of it."
"Whatever are you talking of, Kitten!" the elder Miss Bush exclaimed, as she stirred her cocoa. "Why, Liv and Dev's as good a berth as you'd get—thirty bob a week, and a whole holiday on Saturday—to say nothing of off times like this—you must be mad, dearie!" Then something further in her sister's remark aroused comment.
"And what do you mean by people of 'another class'? Why, aren't we as good as anyone—if we had their money?"
Katherine Bush put down her empty cup before she replied:
"No, we're not—and if you weren't as ignorant as you are, dear old Tild, you'd know it. There are lots and lots of classes above us—they mayn't be any cleverer—indeed, they are often fools, and many aren't any richer—but they're ladies and gentlemen."
Matilda felt personally insulted.