“Any way you like. If you're really going to see them, perhaps I'd better make a confession. I left your banjo with them, after I got it put in order.”
“How very nice! Then we have a common interest already.”
“Do you mean the banjo, or—”
“The banjo, decidedly. Which of them plays?”
“Neither. But the eldest heard that the banjo was 'all the rage,' as the youngest says. Perhaps you can persuade them that good works are the rage, too.”
Beaton had no very lively belief that Margaret would go to see the Dryfooses; he did so few of the things he proposed that he went upon the theory that others must be as faithless. Still, he had a cruel amusement in figuring the possible encounter between Margaret Vance, with her intellectual elegance, her eager sympathies and generous ideals, and those girls with their rude past, their false and distorted perspective, their sordid and hungry selfishness, and their faith in the omnipotence of their father's wealth wounded by their experience of its present social impotence. At the bottom of his heart he sympathized with them rather than with her; he was more like them.
People had ceased coming, and some of them were going. Miss Vance said she must go, too, and she was about to rise, when the host came up with March; Beaton turned away.
“Miss Vance, I want to introduce Mr. March, the editor of 'Every Other Week.' You oughtn't to be restricted to the art department. We literary fellows think that arm of the service gets too much of the glory nowadays.” His banter was for Beaton, but he was already beyond ear-shot, and the host went on:
“Mr. March can talk with you about your favorite Boston. He's just turned his back on it.”
“Oh, I hope not!” said Miss Vance. “I can't imagine anybody voluntarily leaving Boston.”