'I don't know what that discontented creature, her sister, means by saying Vida is so unsympathetic about charity work.'
Neither could Lady John's neighbour, the Bishop, understand Mrs. Fox-Moore's reproach. Had not his young kinswoman's charity concerts helped to rebuild the chantry?
'Such a nice creature!' was Lord John's contribution. Then, showing the profundity of his friendly interest, 'Why doesn't she find some nice fella to marry her?'
'People don't marry so early nowadays,' his wife reassured him.
Lord Borrodaile, to whom Vida still talked freely, he alone had some understanding of the changed face life was coming to wear for her. When he found that laughing at her failed of the desired effect, he offered touching testimony to his affection for her by trying to understand. It was no small thing for a man like Borrodaile, who, for the rest, found it no easier than others of his class rightly to interpret the modern scene as looked down upon from the narrow lancet of the mediæval tower which was his mind.
When she got him to smile at her report of the humours of the populace, he did so against his will, shaking his long Van Dyke head, and saying—
'It spoils the fun for me to think of your being there. I have a quite unconquerable distrust of eccentricity.'
'There's nothing the least original about my mixing with "The People," as my sister would call them. The women of my world would often go slumming. The only difference between me and them may be that I, perhaps, shall go a little farther, that's all.'
'Well, I devoutly hope you won't!' he said, with unusual emphasis. 'Let the proletariat attend to the affairs of the proletariat. They don't need a woman like you.'
'They not only need—what's more, they are getting, all kinds! It's that, more than anything else, that shows their strength. The miracle it is, to see the way they all work together! Women, the poorest and most ignorant (except of hardship), working shoulder to shoulder with women of substance and position. Oh, yes, they are winning over that sort, teachers and university graduates—a whole group who would be called Intellectuals if they were men—all doing what men have said women could never do—pulling together. And, oh! that reminds me,' she said suddenly, smiling as one who has thought of a capital joke at her companion's expense: 'it's my duty to warn you. I went with your daughter to lunch at her Country Club, and they were all discussing the Suffrage! A good dozen! And Sophia—well, Sophia came out in a new light. I want you, please, to believe I've never talked to her.'