"Never mind about them; they don't interest me," said Mrs. Frampton. "Tell me what Mr. Reid said. Did you ask him anything about 'Readings' or 'Central Pacifics'?"
"Bless you! no, Aunt Su. Fancy talking of investments en partie carrée with Mrs. Courtly. She would have stopped the sleigh, and have begged us to get out."
Mrs. Reid's dinner that evening, in her magnificent house in Commonwealth Avenue, was as typical, in its way, as Mrs. Courtly's had been. There were six guests, besides Lady Clydesdale, invited to meet our English friends, and most of them appeared to be persons devoted, body and soul, to some one scientific, religious, or philanthropic cause. Genuine enthusiasm about anything is too rare for me to indulge in a little cheap satire about it. Four of these guests struck both Mrs. Frampton and Grace as kindly, honest-minded men and women, not stuck-up with the vanity of well-doing, but with intelligence perhaps a little unduly inflamed over the propagation or extermination of something or other. The fifth was Miss Lobb, who was as drastic, as universal, and as unrelenting in her questions as she had been on board the Teutonic. The sixth was a merry little spinster of forty, with a cropped head and eyebrows like circumflex accents, who seemed strangely out of place in that serious assembly, until it transpired that she wrote for the daily papers—was what is called an "editor," which only means the caterer of certain branches of information. Being a protégée of Mrs. Reid's, she was invited to her table whenever there was "copy" to be picked up. Her name was Pie, which gave rise to a number of facile jokes among her friends—and she had many. For she was always good-humored, never wounded any one by her writing, and was often extremely serviceable to Mrs. Reid and others in airing the views and projects they desired to make public. Mordaunt, who took Mrs. Reid in to dinner, had Miss Pie on his other side. Mrs. Reid naturally sat at the head of her table; but, the party consisting of twelve, it was impossible, in the alternation of guests, that her son should sit opposite her. He took Lady Clydesdale in to dinner, and placed her on his left, facing Mrs. Reid. Grace, on his right, found, to her extreme annoyance, that she was not only next but one to Lady Clydesdale, but, from her position close to the angle, could not avoid conversation with her countrywoman if it was thrust upon her.
Next to Grace was an ancient bachelor, of great wealth and boundless liberality, who had founded and endowed several charitable institutions, and whose purse-strings were so readily untied that he was attacked by every promoter of beneficence in turn. He took Mrs. Frampton in to dinner, upon whose left sat an eminent doctor. Then came Mrs. Reid, dominating the table; and on the other side, next to Miss Pie, a Unitarian minister, naturally voluble, but utterly quelled by Miss Lobb, who was next him. The individual who sat between this terrible lady—before whom most men fled—and Lady Clydesdale was a business man, to whom she devoted most of her attention during dinner.
It had not advanced far when the hostess, placing her heavy artillery into position, directed a slow shot at Mrs. Frampton.
"I regret that, during your too brief stay here, you should not have come into contact with the higher educational and progressive life of Boston, Mrs. Frampton. I have been deploring to Sir Mordaunt Ballinger that he should have seen only the frivolous side of our society. There is another—that of culture, that of philosophical investigation, that of enthusiasm for humanity. These are not to be found at Country Club balls."
"No. They would be rather out of place there. But you have given us enough of all those good things here to-night to readjust the balance, I fancy."
And Mrs. Frampton said this with a pleasant smile, which—probably to all but Miss Pie—robbed the rejoinder of any latent satire.
The benevolent old bachelor on her left here claimed her attention with a remark, which left Mrs. Reid no choice but to withdraw her field-pieces. She turned to her right.
Mordaunt had been talking for the last few minutes to the bright little spinster. He found a hand laid heavily upon his arm, and a voice hurtled past him,