"Of course she is!" said Charmian. "Everybody works too hard at the Synthesis. It's the ideal of the place. We woke her out of a nap, and I know she was tired to death."
Cornelia could not deny it, and so she said nothing.
"Oh!" said Mrs. Maybough, non-committally; "that won't do." She paused, without intermitting the scrutiny which Cornelia felt she had been subjecting her to from the first moment through her veil. "You mustn't wear yourself out." She paused again, and then while Charmian turned away with an effect of impatience, she asked, "Do you ever go out on Sundays?"
"Why, I don't know," Cornelia began, not certain whether Mrs. Maybough meant walking out or driving out; young people did both in Pymantoning.
Mrs. Maybough pursued: "We receive on Thursdays, but we have a few friends coming in to-morrow afternoon, and we should be very glad to see you, if you have nothing better."
The invitation was so tentatively, so gingerly offered in manner, if not in words, that Cornelia was not quite sure it had been given. She involuntarily searched her memory for something better before she spoke; for the first time in her life she was about to invent a previous engagement, when Charmian suddenly turned and laid her arms about her neck.
"You'll come, of course!"
"Charmian!" said Mrs. Maybough. It would have been hard to tell whether she was reproving the action or the urgence. "Then we shall hope to see you?"
"Yes, thank you," said Cornelia.
"Do come!" said Charmian, as if she had not yet accepted. "I can't let it be a whole day and two nights before I see you again!" She put her arm round Cornelia's waist, as the girl went with them to the outer door, to open it for them, in her village fashion. In the hall, Charmian whispered passionately, "Don't you envy them? Oh, if I could live in such a house with you, and with people like that just to look at!"