“Thank goodness!”
“Eve, you were quite rude! And you need not have said, dear——”
“Mother, I told the truth only in self-defence. I was expecting some other deserving charity to arrive at any moment.”
“It is better to give, dear, than to receive.”
“Is it? Of course, we needn’t pay the tradesmen, and we can send the money to some missionary agency.”
“Eve, dear, please don’t be flippant. A word spoken in jest——”
“I’m not, mother. I’m most desperately serious.”
Gertrude Canterton had a very successful afternoon. She motored about forty miles, trifled with three successive teas, and bored some seven householders into promising to consider the claims of the Shop Girls’ Rest Society. She was very talkative at dinner, describing and criticising the various people from whom she had begged.
Canterton showed sudden annoyance.
“You went to the Carfaxes?”