‘Certainly. I do not see how she is to send up the dinner properly if she is to be our guest, and I imagine also she would not be comfortable with us.’
Mrs. M. ‘Why shouldn’t she be comfortable? Of course, if we don’t try to make her so she won’t be. There are ways to make people comfortable and ways to make them uncomfortable. Miss Toller is just as good as any of us.’
Miss T. ‘She is not an educated woman, and I am sure she would rather remain downstairs; our conversation would not interest her.’
Miss E. ‘Pray, Miss Taggart, what is an educated woman?’
Miss T. ‘What a question, Miss Everard! By an educated woman is meant a woman who has been taught the usual curriculum of a lady in cultivated circles.’
Miss E. ‘What is the curriculum of a cultivated lady?’
Miss T. ‘Really you are provoking; you understand perfectly as well as I do.’
Miss E. ‘I am still in the dark. What is the curriculum of a cultivated lady?’
Mrs. P. ‘I much doubt if Miss Toller is acquainted with the ordinary facts of geography, even those which are familiar to common seamen in the Navy. She probably could not tell us the situation of the Straits of Panama.’
Mrs. Poulter had been reading something in the newspaper the day before about the Panama Canal.