"Such outsiders!" she said. "Can't you imagine the sort of a party they'd have—they'd all stand around and discuss psychology and dissecting puppies and Greek roots! Phil, I think it would be a lovely punishment for you to have to join them—to work in a laboratory all day and wear a celluloid collar."
"Oh, I know their sort; 'greasy grinds' we used to call them; there were plenty of them in Yale," condescended Phil.
"Maybe they wear celluloid collars—if they do—because they're poor," protested Ruth.
"My dear child," sniffed Aunt Emma, "with collars only twenty-five cents apiece? Don't be silly!"
Mr. Winslow declared, with portly timidity, "Why, Em, my collars don't cost me but fifteen——"
"Mason dear, let's not discuss it at dinner.... Tell me, all of you, the scandal I've missed by going to California. Which reminds me; did I tell you I saw that miserable Amy Baslin, you remember, that married the porter or the superintendent or something in her father's factory? I saw her and her husband at Pasadena, and they seemed to be happy. Of course Amy would put the best face she could on it, but they must have been miserably unhappy—such a sad affair, and she could have married quite decently."
"What do you mean by 'decently'?" Ruth demanded.
Carl was startled. He had once asked Ruth the same question about the same phrase.
Aunt Emma revolved like a gun-turret getting Ruth's range, and remarked, calmly: "My dear child, you know quite well what I mean. Don't, I beg of you, bring any socialistic problems to dinner till you have really learned something about them.... Now I want to hear all the nice scandals I have missed."
There were not many she had missed; but she kept the conversation sternly to discussions of people whose names Carl had never heard. Again he was obviously an Outsider. Still ignoring Carl, Aunt Emma demanded of Ruth and Phil, sitting together opposite her: