“Oh! indeed! I knew she thought some of the younger members of the connection very attractive,” said Mrs. Bolter.
Mrs. Clough rose, and, with a bow, left the assembly.
She was comforted that evening by hearing her husband not only commend her views warmly, but abuse Mrs. Bolter as a “stuck-up and ill-bred woman, as vain and vulgar as Bolter himself,” whom he would not trust around the corner.
“If she is that now, what will she be after she marries her daughter to Captain Middleton?” Mrs. Clough said. “She’s had him in tow ever since he came home a week ago. I do think it is vulgar, the way some women run after men for their daughters nowadays. She has not given that poor man an hour’s rest since he landed.”
“I don’t believe there’s anything in that. Larry would not marry one of that family. He knows Bolter too well. I always thought he would end by marrying Ruth Welch, and he told me to-day at the club he was going South.”
“Oh! all you men always were silly about Ruth Welch. You all thought she was the most beautiful creature in the world,” said little Mrs. Clough, with an air not wholly reconcilable with her attitude at the Aid Society meeting just recorded.
“No, I know one man who made one exception,” said her husband leaning over and kissing her, and thereupon, as is the way with lovers, began “new matter.”
“Captain Middleton is not going South,” said Mrs. Clough, suddenly. “That is, he’s going south; but not to the South.”
“He is not! Why, he told me he was.”
“Well, he’s not. He’s going to Washington.” She spoke oracularly.