"It is not only in evening parties. If you want me to say what I think, Mrs. Wishart. It is the same always, if people come for morning calls, or if we go to them, or if we see them in the evening; people talk about nothing; nothing they care about."
"Nothing you care about."
"They do not seem to care about it either."
"Why do you suppose they talk it then?" Mrs. Wishart asked, amused.
"It seems to be a form they must go through," Lois said, laughing a little. "Perhaps they enjoy it, but they do not seem as if they did. And they laugh so incessantly,—some of them,—at what has no fun in it. That seems to be a form too; but laughing for form's sake seems to me hard work."
"My dear, do you want people to be always serious?"
"How do you mean, 'serious'?"
"Do you want them to be always going 'deep' into things?"
"N-o, perhaps not; but I would like them to be always in earnest."
"My dear! What a fearful state of society you would bring about!
Imagine for a moment that everybody was always in earnest!"