“Do they?” said Susie. She paused reflectively. “I have known one or two,” she said, after a pause, “whom men have loved very much. I don’t think it is the learning part that men hate; it is something else which now and then the learned woman possesses. Perhaps it is pride in her own attainments. Surely no sensible man can dislike a woman for knowing things.”
“They do—they all do,” said Mrs Fortescue. “My dear late lamented did. He told me he could not even have looked at me if I had had a smattering of Latin or Greek; and I have heard many other men say the same.”
“Then they must be quite worthless,” said Susie, “and we needn’t bother about them. Ah! and here comes the tea. Put it here, please, Peters.”
The servant arranged the very tempting tea on a little table, and Susie stood up to perform her duties as hostess. She was certainly remarkably plain, but, somehow, no one ever thought her plain when they looked at her, for goodness shone out of her eyes and seemed to radiate from her stout little person. Mrs Fortescue was quite ready to do justice to the excellent tea, the rich cream, the plum cake, and that new recipe for hot cakes which Susie’s cook had so successfully carried out and which resulted in such appetising, melting morsels, that the good woman was consoled for the loss of one of her few bottles of champagne, and for the fact that she knew very well that Major Reid had hated his lunch.
“Do you know,” she said, as she finished her meal, “that I never enjoy my tea anywhere as I do here. Besides, I had a hot lunch to-day. Who do you think came and had lunch with me?”
“How can I guess?” said Susie. “I suppose you were all alone, as the girls were in London.”
“No: I was not alone. I had a visitor—a man.”
“A man?” said Susie, opening her round eyes.
“Yes; no less a person than Major Reid. Now, what do you think of that?”
“Oh; I like him very much,” said Susie.