Mrs. Eugenia Parker was not silent. She talked heartily of conditions of working and living, North, East, South, and West, and paid warm tribute to the fine progress the Old South was making.
“And that is why it distresses me so to find my son’s mill—at least, the mill of which he is part owner—so far below standard! Mr. Carey’s cousin, a most charming young widow, Mrs. Tenafee—I daresay you know her? No? Well, she called upon me, and I found her thoroughly awake to the situation. The club women are accomplishing wonders, I understand.”
They had reached the entrance to the Bella Vista’s grounds, and halted.
“Good night,” said Glen, still with the new gentleness in her voice.
But the Federation President continued to talk. It was an exquisite night, windless and still, white beneath a fulling moon, and somewhere in the hotel’s gardens a mocking bird was singing, and the busy and purposeful lady seemed loath to call it a day.
“I have not yet visited the mill at night. I believe I shall go down for a little while. Peter is there, and I can come back with him.”
So they went forward again, side by side, companionably, Mrs. Eugenia Parker and the young woman who had penned the vitriolic editorial in The Torch about her son.
CHAPTER XVIII
Mrs. Eugenia Parker has the doubtful satisfaction of seeing her trifling son in action for the first time.
STILL gently, the doctor’s daughter agreed with the President of the Federated Clubs that conditions of living and laboring were being steadily bettered, that the woman’s vote, already making itself definitely felt, was to be the world’s greatest power for constructive good—this in the lady’s able platform manner—but while she listened with every evidence of well-bred attention, what she really heard was two small speeches which repeated themselves over and over again in her mind and her memory——
“My father is dead, but he taught me to be a good hater.”