“Oh, that depends on where you draw the line. Don’t you think she’s handsome?”
“I can hardly say. What do you think about it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. When she’s well dressed she has a sort of style about her; but isn’t it merciful that we none of us know how we really do look? If we did, we wouldn’t risk bein’ alone with ourselves five minutes without a gun.”
“Is that one for Miss Bascom?”
“No, I ought not to say a word against Virginia Bascom. She’s a good sort accordin’ to her lights; and then too, she is a disconnection of mine by marriage—once removed.”
“How do you calculate that relationship?”
“Oh, her mother’s brother married my sister. She suspected that he was guilty of incompatibility—and she proved it, and got a divorce. If that don’t make a disconnection of Ginty Bascom, then I don’t know what does. Virginia was born in Boston, though she was brought up here. It must be terrible to be born in Boston, and have to live up to it, when you spend your whole life in a place like Durford. But Ginty does her very best, though occasionally she forgets.”
“You can hardly blame her for that. Memory is tricky, and Boston and Durford are about as unlike as two places well could be.” 47
“Oh, no; I don’t blame her. Once she formed a club for woman’s suffrage. She set out to ‘form my mind’—as if my mind wasn’t pretty thoroughly formed at this time of day—and get me to protest against the tyranny of the male sex. I didn’t see that the male sex was troublin’ her much; but I signed a petition she got up to send to the Governor or somebody, asking for the right to vote. There was an opposition society that didn’t want the ballot, and they got up another petition.”
“And you signed that too, I expect,” laughed Donald.