She had an odd, timid curiosity about Greenleaf's friends, about everyone who did anything, as if she feared to intrude on them even in thought.
Greenleaf had spoken about them before and not unintentionally. These three sisters, living in their flat off Holborn, doing all their housework themselves, and yet finding time to work among the poor, to be cultivated and charming, were a stalking horse of his, an example he liked to bring before this member of fast society.
He had taken his refusal by one of the sisters with a philosophy which had astonished himself, for he certainly had thought that Delia was very dear to him. She was dear in a way now. But he felt quite pleased at her marriage with young Farquhar of the Museum, and he rather enjoyed talking about her. He told Miss Flodden of Maggie Carpenter's work among the sweaters, and of the readings of English literature she and Clara gave to the shop-girls; and he was a little shocked, when he told her of the young woman from Shoolbred's who had borrowed a volume of Webster, that Val Flodden had never heard of that eminent dramatist, and thought he was the dictionary. He described the little suppers they gave in their big kitchen, where the one or two guests helped to lay the table and to wash up afterwards, previous to going to the highest seats in the Albert Hall, or to some socialist lecture; then the return on foot through the silent, black Bloomsbury streets. He made it sound even more idyllic than it really was. Then he spoke of Delia and the piano lessons she gave and the poems she wrote. He even repeated two of the poems out loud and felt that they were very beautiful.
"They can never bore themselves," remarked Miss Flodden, pensively.
"Bore themselves?" responded Greenleaf.
"Yes: bore themselves and feel they just must have something different to think about, like birds beating against cage bars." Then, after a pause, she said vaguely and hesitatingly: "I wish there were a chance for one to know the Miss Carpenters."
Greenleaf brightened up. This was what he wished. "Of course you shall know them, if you care, Miss Flodden, only——;"
"Only—you mean that they would think me a bore and an intruder."
"No," answered Greenleaf, he scarcely knew why, "that's not what I meant. But you must remember that you and they belong to different classes of society."
Miss Flodden's face contracted. "Ah," she exclaimed angrily. "Why must you throw that in my face? You have said that sort of thing several times before. Why do you?"