I was waiting with impatience to talk to Uncle on the subject of Mrs. Mount, but succeeded in restraining myself until Uncle had finished his first helping of meat. My idea was that, his hunger appeased, I could get him off to a better start. I asked innocently enough: “Uncle, do you know Mrs. Mount?”
His eyes met mine and then settled on his wife.
“Mrs. Mount! Do I know Mrs. Mount? Belle, why do you not introduce Elsie to someone milder than that old battle-axe?”
“I have not introduced her,” replied Mumsie promptly. “I asked Mrs. Mount over the ’phone for some lettuce for our feast and had to bring in Mrs. Lien before I could get it.”
Uncle roared with laughter.
“Elsie, during your stay with us, you will get an insight into human nature if into nothing else,” was his severe comment. “Mrs. Mount” he went on, “is a social-climber; the term is self-explanatory and she and her notions are illuminating. Her past history would make a compendium on the process of social climbing, and the progress of snobbery invaluable to those who have the mean ambition to inflict themselves upon their betters, or, perhaps it were more correct to say, intrude where they are not wanted.”
I was surprised and piqued by his harshness. I think that “pique” looks well.
“Is it wrong,” I asked “to try and get into society?”
“Not wrong, Elsie, but probably unworthy. Of course much depends upon the society aimed at. Ambition is, as the poets have often taught us, a fruitful source of woe, humiliation, and remorse, and social ambition is to my mind the pettiest of vanities. It is as pernicious to-day as when Greece produced—and slew—Socrates.”
I then asked a question which in these new days has often occurred to me.