MRS. TILSBURY. I saw rather a pretty gown in Sappho once. Cavalieri wore it. That’s a modern opera.
MRS. BROWN. Oh, I saw that. It looked as if it were made in Germany. Well, as I was saying, from the concert, I went to a luncheon, then to the Bridge party, and now I am here for dinner. I have not even had the time to give Cochon the air. Mother didn’t even have time to take her little pet walking, did she tootsie-wootsie-tootsie? That’s why I brought him here to-night. Your rooms are bigger than mine and he has more space to run around in.
MRS. TILSBURY. Oh, I didn’t intend to ask you to go to meetings. I have been obliged to give up so much to go to them myself that I would not ask it of any one else. It has been very hard. I was asked to be a manager in the “Unseen Blushers” and I had to refuse because I hadn’t the time.
MRS. BROWN. “The Unseen Blushers”? Oh, that’s the new artistic, musical, and literary society, isn’t it?—but why do they call it by such an odd name? I thought blushes were made to be seen. They are so becoming. I have always wondered that no one has ever invented a rouge that could be turned off and on like an electric light before and after a kiss. There are so many clever inventions nowadays.
MRS. TILSBURY. Oh, not that kind of a blush. “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,” you know. It means to blossom I think. This society is for the discovery of hidden genius. The old theory was that men and women of genius rose to the top as naturally as cream rises and that they produced their works of art as unconcernedly as a hen hatches her eggs, but now the psychologists and physicists believe in aiding nature. They find that they can get more cream by means of a separator, that it is all through the milk and needs to be forced out, and that incubators can hatch eggs better than hens. So this society has been formed to encourage artistic, musical, and literary talent that is hard to discover and is unable to find its way to the surface. You understand!
MRS. BROWN. I don’t! It is all Greek to me, but you are so clever, Josephine. Tell me about your art.
MRS. TILSBURY. I have been forced to give it all up because of Mildred, and my last picture was such a success too. It received the third prize in the impressionist class. It was a painting of a street cleaner—a White Wing. I got the idea from a cup of chocolate I upset. The whipped cream made almost all the figure, the white uniform, you know, and then a few drops of chocolate looked like the bronzed face of a swarthy Italian. I just copied the spill exactly. Near by the thick white paint looked precisely like the whipped cream, but if you stood six yards away every one said it looked just like a street sweeper bending over with his broom to sweep up the dust.
MRS. BROWN. How beautiful, and what an original idea!
MRS. TILSBURY. Yes, that is what everybody said. Nowadays, when there is so much interest taken in the Traffic Squad of police and the firemen, the men who save lives in a conspicuous and sensational manner, and every one wants to reward them and paint them and sculpture them and their horses, no one remembers the humble life-savers who protect us from deadly diseases and pestilences by keeping the streets clean. One woman wrote a poem about my picture, beginning, “Germ gatherer grovelling in the gritty gravel.” It was charming. It is published in the Unseen Blushers Review. I will send you a copy.