“Oh, shall we,” said Evangeline, rather bored. Teresa shrugged her shoulders and passed the cake. Mrs. Carpenter alone took up the challenge. “I think girls have lost all taste for the mere pleasure-loving life they used to lead,” she said, “I know mine won’t look at it. ‘Oh, Mother,’ they say, ‘We’re so bored with parties.’ They are all going to have professions and Lena is going to do social work.” Mrs. Manley, being childless, said nothing.
“Are they!” Susie exclaimed, full of interest. “How wonderful! I often thought as a girl how much I should have liked to be something, but I never had a chance and I am afraid I had no talents.” She dimpled at the three leaders. “I could only admire and enjoy. We must really be going, I think, dears. You belong to the University, don’t you, Mrs. Vachell?” she asked as they dispersed. “It must be so delightful.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Vachell replied, “my husband does. Have you met Mrs. Gainsborough yet?”
“The Principal’s wife?” said Susie. “No, she called last week, but I was out. I was so sorry.” They were walking down the great staircase by this time.
“You must be sure to call on her At Home day,” Mrs. Vachell warned her, “or you will frighten her. It is every Tuesday.”
“Frighten her?” Susie repeated.
“Yes, because if she hasn’t met you first she will have to ask you to dinner without knowing you and she can’t bear that. There she is, by the way, still in the hall. Will you come and speak to her?”
Susie allowed herself to be the means of violently startling a massive woman—there is no other way to think of her—dressed in old-fashioned clothes, who was peering timidly through the glass doors that opened on to the street. She turned in a fright when Mrs. Vachell spoke to her. “Oh! is that you!” she exclaimed thankfully. “I can’t think why my cab hasn’t come. I ordered it at a quarter past five and it is nearly six now and it has come on so wet.”
Mrs. Vachell introduced Susie and her daughters and slipped away.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Gainsborough again—(it was her usual beginning)—“so delighted to meet you—so sorry you were out when I called. And these are your girls?—quite so—yes——” She relapsed into silence and went on looking helplessly at the rain.