[78]. Genuine.
“Dear me!” said Helen. “Wasn’t that very inconvenient?”
“Inconvenient as the—as possible, sometimes, till Jack got his promotion. Now we manage all right.”
“Have you any children, Mrs. Lovitt?” Helen ventured, as the bearer brought up another card.
“Children! Bless me, no, I should think not!” replied Mrs. John Lawrence Lovitt. “But I’ve got the littlest black and tan in Calcutta. Jimmy Forbes gave him to me. You must come and see him. Hello, Kitty Toote, so you’re on the rampage! Good-bye, Mrs. Browne; don’t let her prejudice you against Calcutta. She’s always running it down, and it’s the sweetest place in the world!”
Mrs. Toote made polite greetings to Mrs. Browne. “You know it isn’t really,” she said, disposing her tall figure gracefully among the cotton cushions of Helen’s little sofa. “But of course it depends upon your tastes.” Mrs. Toote had fine eyes, and an inclination to embonpoint. Her expression advertised a superior discontent, but there was a more genuine suggestion of gratified well-being underneath which contradicted the advertisement. “It’s really awfully frivolous here,” Mrs. Toote remarked. “Don’t you think so—after England?”
“How can I possibly tell—so soon?” said Helen.
“No, I suppose not. Personally, I wouldn’t mind the frivolity. The frivolity’s all right—if there were only anything else, but there isn’t.”
“Anything else?” Helen inquired.
“Yes, anything really elevating, you know—anything that one could devote one’s self to. I haven’t a word to say against frivolity; I like it myself as well as anybody,” said Mrs. Toote with engaging naïveté, “but there ought to be something behind it to back it up, you know.” Mrs. Toote spoke as if she were objecting to dining exclusively upon ortolans. But the objection was a matter of pure dietetic theory. In practice, Mrs. Toote throve upon ortolans.