When Margaret Pole talked in this strain, men thought her intelligent and women cynical. Isabelle felt that this cynicism had grown upon her. It appeared in little things, as when she said: "I can stay only a week. I must see to breaking up the house and a lot of business. We shall never sail if I don't go back and get at it. Men are supposed to be practical and attend to the details, but they don't if they can get out of them." When Isabelle complimented her on her pretty figure, Margaret said with a mocking grimace: "Yes, the figure is there yet. The face goes first usually." Isabelle had to admit that Margaret's delicate, girlish face had grown strangely old and grave. The smile about the thin lips was there, but it was a mocking or a wistful smile. The blue eyes were deeper underneath the high brow. Life was writing its record on this fine face,—a record not easily read, however. They fell to talking over the St. Mary's girls.
"Aline,—have you seen much of her?" Margaret asked.
"Not as much as I hoped to,—I have been so useless," Isabelle replied.
"She's grown queer!"
"Queer?"
"She is rather dowdy, and they live in such a funny way,—always in a mess. Of course they haven't much money, but they needn't be so—squalid,—the children and the mussy house and all."
"Aline doesn't care for things," Margaret observed.
"But one must care enough to be clean! And she has gone in for fads,—she has taken to spinning and weaving and designing jewellery and I don't know what."
"That is her escape," Margaret explained.
"Escape? It must be horrid for her husband and awful for the children."
"What would you have her do? Scrub and wash and mend and keep a tidy house? That would take all the poetry out of Aline, destroy her personality. Isn't it better for her husband and for the children that she should keep herself alive and give them something better than a good housewife?"