“So I am,” said Nancy, “the best friend she’s got. Go on, dear.”
“Then he said slowly and thoughtfully, ‘It’s a crime for a woman like that not to be the mother of children. If ever I saw a maternal type, Miss Ann Martin is the apotheosis of it. Why some man hasn’t made her understand that long ago I can not see.’”
Nancy’s cheeks burned crimson and then white again.
“How dare Betty?” she said.
“Wait till you hear. You know Betty doesn’t care what she says. Her reply to that was peculiarly Bettyish. She sighed and cast down her eyes,—the little imp! ‘The course of true love never does run smooth,’ she said; ‘perhaps Ann has discovered the truth of that old saying in some new connection.’ She didn’t mean to be a cat, she was only trying to create a romantic interest in your affairs, doing as she would be done by. The effect was more than she bargained for though. Collier Pratt’s eyes quite lit up. ‘I can imagine no greater crime than frustrating the instincts 111 of a woman like that,’ he said. Imagine that—the instincts—whereupon Betty, of course, flounced off and left him.”
“She would,” Nancy said. Then a storm of real anger surged through her. “I’ll turn her out of my place to-morrow. I’ll never look at her or speak to her again.”
“I think it would be more to the point,” Caroline said, “to turn out Collier Pratt. That was certainly an extraordinary way for him to speak of you to a girl who is a stranger to him.”
“Caroline, you’re almost as bad as Betty is. You’re both of you hopelessly—helplessly—provincially American. I don’t think that was extraordinary or impertinent even,” Nancy said. “I—I understand how that man means things.”
The car drove up in front of the office of the justice of the peace in the town beyond that in which they had had their unauspicious luncheon party.