"I don't mean that; but don't you think, Aunt Eleanor, you can usually tell very rich people? They are apt to be limited, in a way. Not always, of course, but often. I can't explain it exactly. Perhaps it is over-refined."
"If to be refined is to be limited, I prefer to be limited," Mrs. Pennington remarked.
It was plain that unless Margaret Elizabeth went to the length of retailing the whole of that Sunday morning conversation, which was out of the question, she could not hope to make her meaning clear.
"What surprises me," her aunt went on, "is that you should have met Augustus in a public park. It is very unlike him. I wonder what he thought of you?"
This brought out Miss Bentley's dimples, as she owned he had seemed not displeased to meet her. "I explained that I was waiting for Dr. Prue, who had gone in to see one of the superintendent's children." She further assured her aunt that River Bend Park was a delightful place in which to enjoy nature, on Sunday morning or any other time.
"I confess I do not choose a public park when I wish to enjoy nature—except for driving, of course. Perhaps," added Mrs. Pennington, "that is what you call over-refined."
Margaret Elizabeth considered this thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is," she said. "Not being able to enjoy things that are free to everybody."
But Margaret Elizabeth in that frivolously-becoming cap was an antidote to her own remarks. Mrs. Pennington smiled indulgently. Richard's daughter came honestly by some eccentricities, not to mention those Vandegrifts, whose influence she greatly deplored.
"You will outgrow these socialistic ideas, my dear," she said. "But I am still puzzled, the more I think of it, at your meeting Augustus on Sunday morning. Was it two weeks ago? I am under the impression he left for New York that very day."
"He didn't mention it, but there are afternoon trains," answered Margaret Elizabeth. "He merely said something about a sick boy he was going to see at St. Mary's."