She followed Gilbert back into the second parlour, lost in her dream. But to the others the music, a pleasant little interlude, was over, and the rest of the long evening stretched before them. The old lady began to crochet, and Gilbert took up his newspaper.
“Like to see the Woman’s Page, Claudine?” he asked.
Now Claudine had a lamentable dislike for newspapers. She never read them; she wasn’t well-informed. No one in her house showed much interest in current events, they envisaged human life as an immense and absorbing history, and the present as one small day of it. Her father was a sort of benevolent Anarchist who couldn’t endure the thought of restraint laid upon evolution; her mother was blandly indifferent to anything outside her own family; Lance lived in pre-historic ages. Nevertheless, she accepted the Woman’s Page, read the fashion hints, a little article on the care of house plants. Then she put the thing down and sat doing nothing.
“Don’t you do fancy work?” asked the old lady.
“Yes, sometimes,” said Claudine. “But....”
She rose.
“I think I’ll go to bed now,” she said. “I’m so tired.”
Gilbert looked up from his paper and the old lady stared at her, affronted and amazed.
“It’s only half past nine!” she said tartly. “I should think you could wait till eleven, like the rest of us. I dare say you’re not any more tired than anybody else.”
“Never mind, Mother, if she’s tired ...” Gilbert began, but Claudine had sat down again with flaming cheeks.