But the
remaining tenth? Would it be such excruciatingly bad form for us to be
intelligent, occasionally; say, on one or two Fridays during the season?
Mrs. Denton wrapped it up tactfully; but that was her daring suggestion.
It took them aback at first. There were people who did this sort of
thing. People of no class, who called themselves names and took up
things. But for people of social standing to talk about serious
subjects--except, perhaps, in bed to one's wife! It sounded so
un-English.
With the elders it was sense of duty that prevailed. That, at all
events, was English. The country must be saved. To their sons and
daughters it was the originality, the novelty that gradually appealed.
Mrs. Denton's Fridays became a new sensation. It came to be the chic and
proper thing to appear at them in shades of mauve or purple. A pushing
little woman in Hanover Street designed the "Denton" bodice, with hanging
sleeves and square-cut neck. The younger men inclined towards a coat
shaped to the waist with a roll collar.
Joan sighed. It looked as if the word had been passed round to treat the
whole thing as a joke.
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