"If they was all swep' out of the world, it would be just the same to me," said Flora, viciously.
Fred kept a severely straight face; all the household knew poor Flora had had another disappointment.
"Why?"—"Why?"—everybody asked. But Frederica only thought "why." Her first feeling when he went away had been a sort of blank astonishment. Of course, it was all right; there was no reason he shouldn't go, only—"Why?"
Every day, as she worked at her desk, or took a trolley-car to the suburbs to inspect some apartment, or sat in absorbed silence opposite her mother at the dinner-table, she was saying, why? She was certain that he was fond of her. "Did he go because he thought I was so deep in business that I wouldn't bother with him? Or because he wanted to show me he could put in really serious licks of work? Or because he was afraid I'd turn him down? Of course, I am awfully matter-of-fact," she admitted; "but all the same, he's blind if he thinks that!"
Sometimes, when her mother commented vaguely on the weather, or on Flora's indelicacy in being so daft about men, or Miss Carter's perfectly unreasonable wish to go to the theater once a week, besides her regular evening out—"I don't go once a year," Mrs. Payton said—Frederica would start and say, "Beg your pardon? I didn't hear you." Nor would she hear her mother's dreary sigh.
"Freddy has nothing in common with me," Mrs. Payton used to think, and sigh again. It did not occur to her to say, "I have nothing in common with Freddy." Certainly, they had nothing of mutual interest to talk about.... Mrs. Payton was wondering dully whether she had not better take a grain of calomel; why they would not eat cold mutton in the kitchen; whether Flora wouldn't be a little more cheerful now, for Miss Carter said that the McKnights' chauffeur was making up to her.... Fred was wondering how soon her last letter would reach Howard Maitland; foreseeing his interest in its contents—the news that Smith had been beaten, but pledged to the support of suffrage in his next campaign; calculating as to the earliest possible date of his reply.... Mrs. Payton was right; they had nothing in common. By and by, as the weeks passed, the mother and daughter, together only at meals, lapsed into almost complete silence.
"I love both my children just the same, but Mortimore is more of a companion than she is," Mrs. Payton thought, bitterly.
There was, however, one moment, in April, when Frederica did talk.... Mrs. Holmes had come in to dinner, and somehow things started badly. Mrs. Payton had said, sighing, that she was pretty tired; "I really haven't got over the Christmas rush, yet," she complained. And Frederica, with a shrug, said that the Christmas debauch was getting worse each year. Then the suffrage parade was discussed. It had taken place the day before, in brilliant sunshine, and on perfectly dry streets, which greatly provoked Mrs. Holmes, who had prayed for rain. Naturally, she made vicious thrusts at the women who took their dry-shod part in it. She was thankful, she said, that William Childs had locked Laura up; anyhow, she hadn't disgraced the family!
"Do you call taking her to St. Louis 'locking her up'?" Fred inquired. "Laura gave in to Billy-boy, which was rather sandless in her. She is a dear, but she hasn't much sand."
"She has decency, which is better. To show yourselves off to a lot of coarse men—"