Madeleine’s pleasant brown eyes sparkled with gratification.
“I do like you to say so,” she said, “for I know you mean it, little as I feel I deserve it. Don’t you think,” she continued, “that real praise always makes one feel very humble?”
“Yes,” said Frances, with a smile, “your thinking so much of mine has that effect on me at this moment.”
“Please leave off paying each other compliments,” said Eira, “I want to hear some more about Mrs Conrad Littlewood. Is she always called ‘Elise?’ her real name is Elizabeth, I know. I don’t think Elise suits a very stately, ‘grande dame’ sort of person!”
“She isn’t that,” said Madeleine, “she is really very nice—what a stupid expression!—it is just, I suppose, that she has always lived in a certain way, and not come really into contact with the other half of the world, though she believes herself to be very wide-minded, and is benevolent. I often think if she hadn’t married my brother, though he is a good fellow too, she would have been different—really wider in her outlook.”
She smiled to herself as she spoke.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Frances.
“I was only picturing to myself,” was the reply, “how differently you and she would go about the same sort of thing, even with equally good intentions. I was thinking, down at the harbour, how you forget yourself and your own standpoint almost, for the time, in your sympathy with the people! That is how you gain their confidence. Whereas Elise, with the best will in the world, however kindly she spoke, would remain an outsider. She would come away saying one must never expect gratitude, and be very good to them all the same, and very pleased with herself for not being repelled by their peculiar offhand manners and want of deference.”
“Well,” said Betty, speaking for the first time. “I must say I should have some fellow-feeling with my namesake as regards your pet fisher-folk. They are unusually queer, you must allow; in fact, they seem to me half-savages, wherever they came from.”
“Your bark is worse than your bite, Betty,” said Eira. “I saw you hugging, yes, really hugging, one of those little black-eyed imps down there one day, one of the rare days we persuaded you to go with us. And he clung on to you like a limpet!”