To Mrs. Carfax, painting, to the exclusion of all the other activities of the Muses, was art, as Miss Page understood.
“You wouldn’t like her to paint?”
“Oh landscapes and flowers, and that sort of thing is all right. A very nice amusement. I’ve got lots of water-colour sketches I did as a girl, and hand-painted screens, and sofa cushions too. But nowadays art is such a shocking thing, isn’t it? I hear that Susie Villiers draws from the nude, as they call it. To me, it’s a perfectly disgusting idea. And they draw men, as well as women. Imagine a young girl having the boldness to draw a man without his clothes!”
“Do have some of this toast before it gets cold,” urged Anne. “Oh! while I think of it I wish you would tell me how to make that delicious shortbread I tasted the last time I came to you.”
Mrs. Carfax, adroitly switched off the topic of art as she understood it, was on firm ground now that culinary operations held the conversational field.
She gave minute directions to which her friend listened with flattering attention.
“I must write that down before I forget it,” said Anne, opening a bureau to take from it her book of recipes.
“How beautifully orderly you are!” exclaimed her guest, glancing with admiration at the packets of papers tied with ribbon, the piles of little books which filled the pigeonholes. “What a pity you never married. You would have made such a good wife. The wives of to-day are shocking housekeepers. Look at that flighty little Mrs. Dakin! The doctor, poor man, must suffer a good deal. I doubt whether he ever gets a decent meal. Don’t you think it’s very extraordinary of him to let her go away for such a long visit as she proposes to make? I think that kind of thing is a mistake, you know.”
Launched upon the stream of gossip for which she possessed a considerable weakness, Mrs. Carfax shook her head portentously.
“He thinks it will be good for her health. She’s not very strong, is she? And this place doesn’t suit her in the winter.”