“You would easily find another who would do just the same,” Mrs. Vachell remarked, “and it might be good for him not to depend so much on one person.”
“No, no,” Evangeline repeated. “I won’t do that. But people can make one’s life a burden, can’t they! Just by disapproving.”
“I never allow anyone’s vagaries to bother me,” said Mrs. Vachell coolly. “I do the best I can and am proof against black looks. Angry faces are as soon dead as merry ones and their memory is not kept green.”
“Do you think a man’s feeling about children is always different from a woman’s?” Evangeline asked presently.
“Yes, very different,” Mrs. Vachell replied. “I think, if you ask me, they are the most ram-headed, firebrand, poker-fingered lumps of folly that could have been planted on an unhappy world to wreck its comfort.” She spoke in a low, deliberate voice. “Damned fools,” she added lightly. “Don’t you think so in your heart?”
Evangeline was just going to answer when she remembered her husband’s description of Mrs. Vachell after the Prices’ party, “intelligent” and “cultivated” and “talks like a lady.” She saw a very old mistake for the first time, fresh in all its eternal comedy, and was lifted right out of her present difficulties by the amusement of it. “How gloriously funny!” she exclaimed.
“What is funny?” Mrs. Vachell asked, a little displeased.
“That you should think that, and—Evan was so delighted with you!” Evangeline blurted out.
“Pooh!” said Mrs. Vachell. “I suppose you think I was trying to please him?”
“Oh, gracious, no,” said the poor girl. “I told him he knew nothing about you.”