Mrs. Mount looked at us coldly, said: “How do you do,” and started away on a long tirade.
“I got so beastly tired of home and, do you know, I said to Doris that I really thought we must have a change. Doris has never yet attended a Drawing-room,” etc., etc. It was a long dissertation about her habits and doings. She was evidently a guest of the Hotel, so was not the guest of Lady Matthews. Nor did she offer any explanation of the difference from what she had led us to expect. Probably she had forgotten the account she gave us a week or so ago, wherein Lady Matthews,—“Clair as I always call her”—had invited her to the opening. Mrs. Mount I’m afraid, has lost her novelty for me, and I’m with Uncle in putting her beyond the pale.
Mr. Bang was most attentive to-day. Probably my latest mood has attracted him. Still I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of inscribing on my visiting card, “Mrs. Bang.”
After the opening I fell into a long conversation with Mr. Fraser. He is a pleasant man to talk to. And I can quite understand how his chief is the charming personality everybody says he is.
“It is not wonderful,” said he, “that you find Mr. Bang a strange character. He is of the school of many years ago. Changes of temperament, like fashions, develop in the great centres, the capitals of Europe. Jack’s tricks of mind are of another age handed down from generation to generation, true to its parent culture, that culture which took life seriously and whose chief diversion was controversy. His ideals are of that school and have been impervious to change.”
“Oh! I see,” I agreed, in no positive tone.
“I don’t know if I have made myself clear,” continued Mr. Fraser, “but perhaps you may better understand what I mean when I tell you, that French scholars say they find in Quebec phrases and expressions that have been dead for ages in France. So old habits of thought are still with us. Jack is, however, one of the best of fellows.”
Mr. Fraser’s tone in speaking of Mr. Bang is most sympathetic which reconciles me somewhat to the man, if not to his name.
January 14th.
“Oh, Mrs. Somers,” blustered Mrs. Mount to Mumsie when I was with her in the drawing-room this morning, “I have had such a shock, such a shock and do you know, really, I don’t exactly know how I am to get over it.”