"You shouldn't laugh at him. He can't help it," said Marion, and she introduced a third admirer to Katharine to get rid of him. He had very little to say, and when she had confessed that she did not bicycle, and never went in the park because she was too busy, he stared a little without speaking at all, and then contrived to join again in the conversation that was buzzing around Marion. Most of the other people had left now, and Katharine was trying to summon up courage to do the same, when her aunt came up to her again, and presented her to a weary-looking girl in a big hat.
"You ought to know each other," she said, effusively, "because you are both workers. Miss Martin does gesso work, and has a studio of her own; and my niece gives lectures, you know."
They looked at one another rather hopelessly, and Katharine resisted another impulse to laugh.
"The knowledge of our mutual occupations doesn't seem to help the conversation much, does it?" she said; and the weary-looking girl tried to smile.
"That's right," said Mrs. Keeley, resting for a moment in a chair near them. "I knew you two would have plenty to say to each other. That's the best of you working-women; there is such a bond of sympathy between you."
"Is there?" said Katharine, remembering the sixty-three working-women at Queen's Crescent, and her feelings towards them. But Mrs. Keeley had ideas about women who worked, and meant to air them.
"It is so splendid to think that women can really do men's work, in spite of everything that is said to the contrary," she continued.
The weary-looking girl made no attempt to contradict her, but Katharine was less docile.
"I don't think they can," she objected. "They might, perhaps, if they had a fair chance; but they haven't."
"But they are getting it every day," cried Mrs. Keeley, waxing enthusiastic. "Think of the progress that has been made, even in my time; and in another ten years there will be nothing that women will not be able to do in common with men! Isn't it a glorious reflection?"