“When Hawley makes me,” answered Sheila, serenely. She was fumbling for something in her exquisite little gold bag—a half-finished lace collar it rolled out to be. “I’m just crocheting this bit of fluff for Margretta,” she explained, laughing a delicious, gurgling sort of laugh. “Isn’t it a joke? I carry it about with me, and work on it between acts—I did two rows in bed this morning—Fanchon was late with my breakfast—and then lots more during the lectures at the Mechanics’ Association.”
“The Mechanics’ Association?” bolted Doromea.
“Yes—every Thursday at noon, you know.” Sheila was counting stitches busily. “Air-ships it was to-day—the most thrilling subject.”
“Oh!” Doromea sat back again. Air-ships; one could understand. Society was engrossed with air-ships just at present.
“I do hope Maurice will take to air-ships,” murmured Sheila, dreamily. “He’s so given over to fireworks now—some part of him’s always exploded. If he keeps it up, he’ll look a guy by the time he’s old enough to lead cotillons.” Behind Sheila’s back, Ellen and Patsy and Doromea exchanged a triumvirate “I told you so”; if it was not polo, it was less than polo; cotillons!
“And Margretta,” suggested Ellen, wondering if Sheila would have looked as absolutely charming had she been hemming dish-towels instead of crocheting Irish lace, “what is Margretta’s raison de vivre?”
“Margretta is going to be an actress,” said Margretta’s mother, slowly. “She is absorbed with playing Little Red Riding-hood to Peter Butler’s wolf at the moment. But later she will be playing—other things in Peter Butler’s theatres. It saves so much management, having a cousin who owns things one wants to enter.”
“And when your two offspring are at their separate vocations,” Doromea smiled above the childish curly head, “while the one is whirring furiously through the air, and the other acknowledging a triumphant series of curtain-calls, what will you be doing? Where will you and Hawley be?”
“Oh, I——!” Sheila shook her hair all into her eyes, as she laughed, gayly insouciant. “I shall be still in society, of course—simply a society butterfly! Hawley and I shall be still giving dinners and going to Elbert Lewises’ and living within call of Wall Street and our clubs. And perhaps—when we feel specially bored—we shall sneak down and play in the sand-pile. But we shall always be doing the conventional, Hawley and I—just Plain People, like the ones in Timothy’s stories” (she turned to Doromea with a little nod of homage); “it is the children who must accomplish the extraordinary. As Hawley says, we shall just be going round the same old track, taking the same old hurdles—and happy as larks at it!”
The careless, rippling voice stopped; for some reason Ellen and Doromea had caught up their sewing again, and were stitching away at a hectic pace. Patsy decided with great suddenness that she must go up and wake the baby. Dumbness seemed to have seized everybody—except Sheila. But then a society person is expected to keep on talking.