Mrs. Flandon went out to the kitchen where Freda was vigorously clearing up.
“You’re doing all the work,” she protested.
“Very sketchily,” confessed Freda, “I can cook better than I clear up, mother tells me.”
“That may be a virtue,” said Helen. She stood leaning against the door, watching Freda.
“Who reads poetry with you?”
“Father—sometimes. Oh, you mustn’t think because you see some things I’m reading that I’m that sort. I’m not at all. I’m really not clever especially. I just like things. All kinds of things.”
“But what kinds?”
“Just so they are alive, that’s all I care. So I scatter—awfully. I can’t get very much worked up about women in politics. It seems to me as if women were wasting a lot of time sometimes.”
“You are like me—a natural born dilettante.”
“Are you that?” asked Freda. Her shyness had gone. Here was some one to whom she could talk.