"You needn't be all that, and yet strike a pleasanter note," the older woman laughed back.
"My dear gray mouse, I'm lots worse than that. Do you know where I was the other night when mamma was in such a temper because I hadn't come home, and telephoned all around to the neighbors?"
"At the Bascoms'?"
"Of course, all sweetly tucked up in bed. Not a bit of it! A lot of us had dinner and went to see a show—that was all on the square. But afterward Teddy Stearns and I did the Clark Street levee, at one in the morning, and quite by ourselves. We saw heaps and heaps—it was very informing—I could tell you such stories! And it went all right until Teddy, like a little fool, got into trouble at one of the places. Some one said something to me not quite refined, and Ted was just enough elated to be on his dignity. If we hadn't had an awful piece of luck, there would have been a little paragraph in the papers the next morning. Wouldn't that have made a noise?"
"You little fool!" groaned Helen.
"Oh! I don't know," Venetia continued imperturbably. "Let me tell you about it. Just as I had hold of Ted and was trying to calm him down, somebody hit him, and there was a general scrap. Ted isn't so much of a fool when he is all sober. Just then a man grabbed me, and I found myself on the street. It was— Well, no matter just now who it was. Then the man went back for Ted, and after a time he got him, rather the worse for his experience. We had to send him to a hotel, and then my rescuer saw me home to the Bascoms'. My, what a talking he put up to me on the way to the North Side!"
She waited to see what effect she had produced, but as Helen said nothing she continued with a laugh:—
"I suppose you are thinking I am a regular little red devil. But you don't know what girls do. I've seen a lot of girls all over. And most of 'em, if they travel in a certain class, do just as fool things as that. On the quiet, you understand, and most of them don't get into trouble, either. They marry all right in the end, and become quiet little mammas like you, dear. Sometimes, when they are silly, or weak, or have bad luck, there's trouble. Now, I am not talking loose, as Ted would say. I've known Baltimore girls, and New York girls, and Philadelphia girls, and Boston girls,—and the Boston ones are the worst ever!
"Why should the women be so different from the men, anyway? They are the same flesh and blood as their fathers and brothers, and other girls' fathers and brothers, too.... Don't make that face at me! I'm nice enough, too, at least a little nice. Didn't you ever sit here evenings, or over at the Eversley Club, and watch the nice little girls? But perhaps you couldn't tell what it means when they do things and say things. You ought to get a few points from me or some other girl who is next them. We could tell you what they've been up to ever since they left school, day by day."
The small Francis was rolling over and over on the green turf, rejoicing in the freedom of soiling his white suit. Beyond the polo field a couple on horseback were passing slowly along the curving road into the woods. The cicadas sang their piercing August song among the shrubs. It was a drowsy, decorous scene.