She turned her eyes on him again, with a new look of sympathy and understanding. Perhaps understanding between them had failed or lapsed but a moment before.
"How all of this shames the town!" she said.
"And us—if we misbehave," he added.
Mrs. Phillips came scurrying along, collecting her scattered guests, as before. "Tea!" she said. "Tea for one or two who must make an early start back to town. Also a sip and a bite for those who stay."
She moved along toward Hortense and her little group. Hortense's "color-notes" did not appear to amount to much. Hortense seemed to have been "fussed"—either by an excess of company and of help, or by some private source of discontent and disequilibrium.
"Come," Mrs. Phillips cried to her, "I need every Martha to lend a hand." Hortense rose, and one of her young men picked up her campstool.
"So glad you haven't got to go early," said Mrs. Phillips to Randolph and Cope. "In fact, you might stay all night. It will be warm, and there are cots and blankets for the porch."
"Thanks, indeed," said Cope. "But I have a class at eight-fifteen to-morrow morning, and they'll be waiting to hear about the English Novel in the Eighteenth Century, worse luck! Fielding and Richardson and—"
"Are you going to explain Pamela and Clarissa to them?" asked Hortense.
She was abrupt and possibly a bit scornful.
Cope seemed to scent a challenge and accepted it. "I am. The women may figure on the covers, but the men play their own strong part through the pages."