A hearty voice soon filled the empty spaces: “Hello there, Ginty; I always did say those auto’s was a poor imitation of a street-car; when they get balky and leave you sticking in the road-side and make you behind-time, you can’t so much as get your fare back and walk. None but royalty, duchesses, and the four-hundred 134 can afford to risk losing their cup o’ tea in them things.”
There was a general laugh at Hepsey’s sally, and conversation again resumed its busy buzzing, and Virginia was obliged to realize that her entry had been something of a frost.
She spent some minutes drawing off her gloves, sipped twice at a cup of tea, and nibbled once at a cake; spent several more minutes getting her hands back into her gloves, fixed a good-by smile on her face, murmured some unintelligible words to her hostess, and departed, annoyed to realize that the engine of the awaiting car—kept running to emphasize her comet-like passage through so mixed an assembly—had become quite inaudible to the company.
“Such an insult!” stormed the lady, as she returned home in high dudgeon. “I might have been a nobody, the way they treated me. Dad shall hear of this; and I’ll see that he puts them where they belong. The impudence! And after his t-treating me s-s-so!” she wept with chagrin, and malice that betokened no good to the rector and his little wife.
Even so, it is doubtful if the host and hostess would have permitted themselves to notice the supercilious rudeness of the leader of Durford “Society,” had Hepsey been able to curb her indignation. 135
As she and Betty and the little maid, assisted by Donald and Nickey and his helpers, were clearing up the fragments that remained of the entertainment, Hepsey broke forth:
“If I don’t set that young woman down in her place where she belongs before I’ve done, I’ve missed my guess: ‘Please announce Miss Virginia Bascom,’ indeed! If that isn’t sauce, I’m the goose.”
“Oh never mind, Mrs. Burke,” soothed Betty in a low voice; “she’ll soon realize that we’re doing things in good old country style, and haven’t brought any city ways with us to Durford. I dare say she thought––”
“Thought nothin’!” replied the exasperated Hepsey. “I’ll thought her, with her high looks and her proud stomach, as the psalmist says. I’d like—oh, wouldn’t I just like to send up a nice little basket of these left-over victuals to Ginty, ‘with Mrs. Maxwell’s regards.’”
She laughed heartily, but Betty was determined not to let herself dwell on anything so trivial, and soon, by way of changing the subject, she was putting Nickey up to the idea of forming a boy-scout corps, which, as she added, could present the village with a thoroughly versatile organization, both useful and ornamental. 136