Isabelle, divided between a desire to laugh and a very vivid sense of Mrs. Leason's feelings, rose, but Fosdick had not finished and she sat down again.
"But what I meant to say was this, madam,—there's only one difference between that old sow and her brood and society as it is run at present, and that is there are a thousand mouths to every teat, and a few big, fat fellows are getting all the food."
He looked up triumphantly from his exposition. There was a titter at Mrs. Lawton's end of the table. This lady had been listening to an indecent story told in French-English when Fosdick had upset things. Now she remarked in an audible tone:—
"Disgusting, I say!"
"Eh! What's the matter? Don't you believe what I told you?" Fosdick demanded.
"Oh, yes, Dickie,—anything you say,—only don't repeat it!" Isabelle exclaimed, rising from the table.
"Does he come from a farm?" one woman murmured indignantly. "Such gros mots!" She too had been listening to the story of adultery at Mrs. Lawton's end of the table. Isabelle, who had taken in the whole situation from her husband's shocked face, Nan Lawton's sly giggle over the salacious tidbit, and Mrs. Leason's offended countenance, felt that she must shriek to relieve her feelings.
The party finally reached the theatre and saw a "sex" play, which caused a furious discussion among the women. "No woman would have done that." "The man was not worth the sacrifice," etc. And Fosdick gloomily remarked in Isabelle's ears: "Rot like this is all you see on the modern stage. And it's because women want it,—they must forever be fooling with sex. Why don't they—"
"Hush, Dickie! you have exploded enough to-night. Don't say that to Mrs.
Leason!"
Her world appeared to her that night a harlequin tangle, and, above all, meaningless—yes, dispiritedly without sense. John, somehow, seemed displeased with her, as if she were responsible for Dickie's breaks. She laughed again as she thought of the sow story, and the way the women took it. "What a silly world,—talk and flutter and gadding, all about nothing!"