And it might happen so easily! she reflected. Why not that company, among the many companies that came to Westport? She'd be frightened to leave the house.
"I suppose when you first heard there was a garden you expected to see apple-trees and strawberry-beds, didn't you?"
"Oh, I don't know. It's not a bad little garden. We had tea in it last night."
She might be walking with Mrs. Kincaid, and Tony and his wife would come suddenly round a corner. And "Miss Westland" would look contemptuous, and Tony would start, and—and if she turned white, she'd loathe herself!
"Did you? You must enliven the old lady? a good deal if she goes in for that sort of thing!"
"Oh, it was stuffy indoors, and we thought that tea outside would be nicer. I daresay I'm better than no one; it must have been rather dull for her alone."
"Is that the most you find to say of yourself—'better than no one'?"
"Well, I haven't high spirits; some women are always laughing. We sit and read, or do needlework; or she talks about you, and——"
"And you're bored? That's a mother's privilege, you know, to bore everybody about her son; you mustn't be hard on her."
"I am interested; I think it's always interesting to hear of a man's work in a profession. And, then, Medicine was my father's."