“I’m not thinking of ordinary things—I’m thinking of you and me and Boston,” pursued Clara, firmly.
“Clara, I can stand a good deal, especially from you, but if you insist upon talking about Boston I’m likely to do something that we’ll both regret.”
“I was just thinking that if you and I had stayed in Boston, in our own little niches, as our kind of people usually do, what would we be doing?” went on Clara, meditatively.
“I would be having a gin fizz at the club,” said Hard, pensively, “to be followed possibly by a game of bridge and a dinner—a real, human dinner, not just food—at my brother John’s.”
“If I had stayed where I belonged, or where everybody said I belonged when my father died and the family income disappeared,” said Clara, persistently, “I would be teaching music in a girls’ school, and planning a trip to Italy with a lot of other middle-aged spinsters. Instead of that, I put all that I had into a two years’ study in London and Paris and fell in with a wandering Englishman, married him, and here I am.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t stay where you belonged, Clara, for quite apart from the pleasure of your company, which under sane conditions I find very delightful, I don’t seem to see you in the rôle of a middle-aged spinster. Still, you might easily have been one. I know some charming girls in Boston who have gone that path.”
“So do I,” soberly. “Some of them so much more charming than some of my married friends that I don’t quite get the idea. Some of Nature’s blunders, I suppose. Well, shall we start?”
“We’d better. I think it’s going to be some walk.”
They plodded along in silence. This time Hard broke it.
“Clara, do you think that youngster is good enough for Marc Scott? You’re clever enough to judge people even on a short acquaintance.”