"When are you fellows going to start that school, Pemberton?" some one asked at last.
"Not until these strikes let up, and there's no telling when that will be. If these labor unions only keep on long enough, they will succeed in killing every sort of enterprise."
"Yes, they're ruining business."
Then Pemberton, who was seated next to Helen, remarked to her:—
"You will be glad to know, Mrs. Hart, that the trustees have decided not to hand the work over to any institution, at least for the present."
"I am so glad of that," she replied.
"That's about as far as we have got."
Sensitively alive to her former blunder in expressing her wish that her husband might draw the plans for the school, she took this as a hint, and dropped the subject altogether, although she had a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue.
She noticed that Jackson, who was seated between Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Phillips, was drinking a good deal of champagne. She thought that he was finding the dinner as intolerably dull as she found it, for he rarely drank champagne. When the women gathered in the drawing-room for coffee, the topic of the Crawfords' disaster had reached the anecdotal stage.
"Poor Linda! Do you remember how she hated Chicago? She's been living at Cannes this season, hasn't she? I suppose she'll come straight home now. Does she own that place in the Berkshires?"