“I’m delighted you approve. I was sure you would. In fact, I’ve told the press—”
“What have you told the press?”
“That you approved. In fact, I said it was your idea.”
“No harm in that,” Minerva murmured.
“You’re always so kind, Mrs. Sloan!”
Minerva thought grimly that beyond doubt this “chronic home” drive would cost her the uncontributed balance of its quota. She had to admit Alice Groves was a good operator. It might, she thought, pay to take Alice into her camp. Then she saw the hat—the sprouted fright—that Netta Bailey was wearing, and she went through the chatting, peanut-eating, one-day seamstresses with a booming, “Afternoon, everybody! Afternoon, Netta! So glad you’re here. I wanted to have a private chat with you— church matters —before you left.”
It was recognition that both delighted and alarmed Netta. Minerva seldom did more than nod to her, at a distance.
The two women were ideally suited to the “little talk” that took place in the “visitors’ powder room,” some half hour later. They were suited in the sense that each knew what she wanted and what the other wanted and each knew what she had of value to the other. It wasn’t even a very long talk, considering that it proposed to settle the lives of a son and a daughter.
Minerva explained her position, rapidly. “You see,” she wound up, “my boy loves Lenore. Crazy about her. Charming girl. I’m crazy about her myself. So unfortunate, dear, old Beau would make a slip at such a time! I have no sympathy with crookedness, Mrs. Bailey….”
“Of course not!”