“People are different, Fliss,” she said gravely. “They’re nice women—these friends of your ma’s—even if they don’t seem very genteel. And it’s been my experience that it’s best to take folks as you find them.”
“I don’t want to take folks like this—at all. I just want to get away from them.”
“So you do; but your ma likes them. They’re the people she knows best and some of them have been awfully good to her. She was telling me how Mrs. Ellis——”
“I know, Ellen. She probably enjoyed it, too. All those women think about is babies and who’s going to have one next.”
Ellen flushed a little. “That’s awful talk, Fliss.”
“Awful! It’s all you hear. Honestly, I don’t know who’s worst—the women in there or the girls I know. If you get shocked at a little thing like that, you ought to hear the way the girls talk. Marjorie Foster—she’s Marjorie Grant now—who was married last month had all the girls in to tea the other day. And you should hear them talk! All about their husbands—and babies—and such.”
The flush on Ellen’s face had risen to her very eyebrows.
“Well, you needn’t talk it to me, Fliss. I think it’s disgusting. I may be country and all that, but I know what’s decent and I don’t think girls who talk like that are.”
Fliss let it drop. She wondered what Ellen would have said if she could have heard her airing her views at Marjorie Grant’s tea on the way she meant to run marriage.
The crowning event of the afternoon approached—the presentation of the prize—to be followed quickly, as if to forestall the disappointment of the losers, by the “refreshments.” Fliss watched the lady with the highest score receive the tissue paper package with anticipatory smiles and giggling, untie the ribbon and hold the painted plate up for the group to see. There was great admiration, a general close inspection. The booby prize, a box of chocolates, was given and received with even more merriment and the ladies settled back, ready for Fliss to proceed with a folded napkin for each capacious lap. Fliss dropped them with a careless little air of detachment that did not quite pretend to hauteur, but approached it. She did not want to talk to them; serve them if she must, but preserve her aloofness at all costs. But even that was not left to her. It was the same Mrs. Ellis, no doubt with a kind of proprietary interest in this slim, silk-clad girl, whom she had first seen as a red little baby emerging into the world under difficulties, who insisted on detaining her for an intimate bit of conversation.