“I should like it very much indeed.”
“Then perhaps you will come to one of my tea-parties. I give two tea-parties a week all through the winter, to just as many of my women friends as this room will hold. It holds about twenty very comfortably, so I make twenty-five the outside limit. We rather enjoy a little bit of a crush—and I give my invitations so that they all have such pleasure as I can give them, fairly, turn and turn about. We do not begin our evening too early, for the working hours are precious to my poor things. We take tea at eight o’clock, and we seldom separate before half-past eleven—just as if we were at a theatre. We have a little music, a little reading and recitation, and sometimes a round game at cards. When we are in a wild humour we play dumb-crambo, or even puss-in-the-corner; and we have always a great deal of talk. We sit round this fireplace in a double semi-circle, the younger ones sitting on the rug in front of us elders, and we talk, and talk, and talk—about ourselves mostly, and you can’t think what good it does us. Surely God gave man speech as the universal safety-valve. It lets off half our troubles, and half our sense of the world’s injustice.”
“Please let me come to your very next party,” said Theodore, smiling at the little woman’s ardour.
“That will be to-morrow evening,” replied Miss Newton. “I shall have to make an excuse for your appearance, as we very seldom invite a man. You will have to read or recite something, as a reason for your being asked, don’t you know.”
“I will not recoil even from that test. I have distinguished myself occasionally at a Penny Reading. Am I to be tragic—or comic?”
“Be both if you can. We like to laugh; but we revel in something that makes us cry desperately. If you could give us something creepy into the bargain, freeze our blood with a ghost or two, it would be all the more enjoyable.”
“I will satiate you with my talents; I shall feel like Pentheus when he intruded upon his mother and her crew, and shall be humbly grateful for not being torn to pieces. I dare say I shall be torn to pieces morally, in the way of criticism. Good night, and a thousand thanks.”
“Wait,” said Miss Newton. “I’m afraid it is much foggier than when you came. I have smelt the fog coming on while we have been talking. Wouldn’t you like a cab?”
“I should very much, but I doubt if I shall succeed in finding one.”
“You wouldn’t, but I dare say I can get you one,” replied Miss Newton, decisively.