"He ought to have been highly flattered. At the end of the song," Sarah pursued, "people began to go, and I thought I would take a seat in their direction without disturbing the conversation."
"In fact you played the eavesdropper?"
"I merely wanted to catch some stray sentence as guide to the situation. Had I felt de trop I should have moved. I approached cautiously and affected to be busy with plates and dishes on a neighbouring table. Philip's attitude was full of interest—he was intent on some argument apparently.
"'I believe a pin is the orthodox weapon,' I heard him saying with questioning eagerness; to which Clair replied, 'Take my advice next time and try a darning-needle.'
"A darning-needle! My curiosity was aroused, and, as the subject seemed to admit of invasion I adroitly wedged in.
"'A darning-needle? for what?'
"'Oh,' she exclaimed with empressement, 'we were talking of periwinkles—discussing the efficacy of pins versus darning-needles—what do you say?'"
II.
After the routing of my sister Sarah, I should have given up interest in her proceedings had not a letter from Clair reached me. It referred to a commission for book illustrations that I had secured for her. From this she volunteered her own patch of information—a crudely-contrastive one, but not without its value in the harmonious scheme.
"To-day," she wrote, "I was introduced to your rara avis, Philip Lorraine. Lady Sargent cannot praise him enough. Continued praise of one individual to another is boring, don't you think so? It is a moral throwing of the gauntlet. Besides, I always suspect the dear creature of designs. Something about her mode of introduction is Autolycus like; one feels like a pedlar's pack with all its little trinkets and tawdrinesses spread out for the buyer. Ah, you don't know your sister. To me she is a dear transparent soul with her whole purport printed on the surface like a sandwich board. She thinks the woman world is ranged in three tiers—the top story for eighteen-year-olds. Everything there must be out on approval. It's no good ticketing yourself 'Not for sale,' nor even pricing yourself at a prohibitive figure—no good whatever. She brings round her customers, provides them with her own lorgnon in the form of opinion, and pads them with conversational treatises on the subject in hand, like a Cook's guide to a party of tourists.