"
"Speak ill? Oh, he did not--and who has, indeed? Ill? What can you
mean? I merely mentioned it as a funny, melodramatic sort of
performance, just like a foolish little girl. Of course there was
nothing really out of the way, only a bit of imprudence--and without a
mother, or chaperone, what can one expect?"
"You speak of what I was about to mention; they have no mother. That
is enough to make any older woman feel it her motherly duty to guard
and counsel them, I'm sure," was the calm reply. "We all must agree on
that."
"Yes, indeed!" ventured Mrs. Windemere in her small voice. "Poor young
things."
"I don't think they seem to need your pity, mother!" cried Janet
sharply, looking across at the merry group, in which were the Hosmer
sisters. "Not in that way, at any rate."
"And," added Mrs. Campbell with an exaggerated drawl, "we who are not
of an age to look upon them in a motherly light may not appreciate all
those feelings. They amuse me, to be sure, but I had scarcely thought
of adopting them."
"Nor their father, either?" put in the attache clumsily, hoping to
raise a laugh and dispel the thunder in the air. But he only drew the
lightning upon himself. She gave him one look that silenced him, and,
lifting the fan in her lap, said languidly,
"How very warm it is! Strange how little the most of us understand the
necessity of fitting our conversation to the weather, if we would be
agreeable. Discussions and personalities, if ever allowable, are only
suited to a zero temperature.
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