“What Lydia Massingbyrd needs is a husband,” Felicia declared, “who would keep her from tampering with other people’s! You’ve been utterly ruined ever since you went around that day carrying Lydia all over the place. You talk about her hair in your sleep.”
Again I ignored Felicia and her unjust accusations. “Poor little Cecilia Bennett! Between admiration and fear she was almost frightened to death.”
“Cecilia is a nice, upstanding, decent little girl,” Felicia asserted, aggressively.
“So she is, so she is,” I hastened to agree. “And that is why—she being only two months out of Farmington—you want to marry her to a man like Almington!”
“What’s wrong with Almington?” asked Felicia, still in her most guileless manner, which I have learned to know is the most finished form of impertinence.
“What’s the matter with Almington?” I exclaimed. “Oh, nothing at all! He’s the stuff perfect husbands are made of. He’s ripe, is Almington, for a little, innocent flower of a girl like Cecilia.”
“Almington’s lots of money,” said Felicia, reflectively; “and Cecilia’s mother’s keen for it. You know there’s no end to the Bennett girls, and they’re poor as anything.”
I maintained a disgusted silence, for I had an inkling that Felicia would have been charmed with an outbreak from me about the iniquity of sacrificing young girls on the altar of Mammon. I therefore resolved to commit myself no further.
It was at this moment that Mrs. Massingbyrd arrived.
The two ladies embraced. Then Felicia held her friend at arms’ length.