"
"Really!" said Claudia, a little confused by this antiphonal kind of
narrative.
"Yes," continued Aunt Jane, "and I see a letter has come in for
you--from home, I think. So this has been quite an eventful morning."
Claudia took the letter and went up to her own room, reflecting a little
ungratefully upon the contentment which reigned below.
She opened her letter. It was, she saw, from her mother, written,
apparently, at two or three sittings, for the last sheet contained a
most voluminous postscript. She read the opening page of salutation, and
then laid it down to prepare for luncheon. Musing as she went about her
room, time slipped away, and the gong was rumbling out its call before
she was quite ready to go down.
She hurried away, and the letter was left unfinished. It caught her eye
in the afternoon; but again Claudia was hurried, and resolved that it
could very well wait until she returned at night.
The club was amusing. Mrs. Warwick, its leading spirit, pleasantly
mingled a certain motherly sympathy with an unconventional habit of
manner and speech. There was an address or lecture during the evening by
a middle-aged woman of great fluency, who rather astounded Claudia by
the freest possible assumption, and by the most sweeping criticism of
the established order of things as it affected women. The general
conversation of the members seemed, however, no less frivolous, though
much less restrained, than she had heard in drawing-rooms at home.
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