“I flatter myself that I am a lady, Mrs. Mince, and I like to give people my frank opinion. I never speak wantonly and unjustly of absent neighbors. But as for those simpering and forward young Gussets, well—”
A knock at the door cut short Mrs. Marjoy’s unprejudiced diatribe. A servant entered with a letter on a salver and stood waiting. Mrs. Marjoy slit the envelope with the handle of a teaspoon, perused the contents of the note, flicked it away contemptuously into the grate.
“No answer.”
The girl disappeared. The doctor’s wife flounced back in her chair, shrugged her shoulders viciously, and surveyed her friend irritably through her spectacles.
“From those Mallabys,” she said.
“Of Catford?”
“People I never could stand. An invitation to their garden-party—such garden-parties, too! The ices made me ill there last summer; James was about all night giving me chlorodyne. Let me see, what were we talking about?”
“The Gussets,” crowed Mrs. Mince.
“Oh yes, those most immoral women. Really, my dear, I wonder John Strong lets his daughter associate with such people, but of course everybody knows that John Strong is a snob and a toady. The way the girl Ophelia flirts with that young Gabriel is absolutely indecent. They are always about fishing together, now, down in the Mallan. Most improper! You should hear James’s views on society women. I’ve just been reading that awful Gosling case in the newspapers.”
Mrs. Mince’s interest revived ostensibly. She brushed sundry crumbs from her lap and rearranged her cushions.