Part 38

"Indeed!" She felt slightly insulted at his assumption of what she would like, and dismissed the subject with a wave of her pretty hand. Fothergil tried again.

"I hope," he said ingratiatingly, "that you haven't been bothered by mosquitoes." She looked a bit frightened, but said nothing, and he dashed on determinedly. "You know, this is a new variety of mosquitoes we've been having this year. Most of them have stripes on their legs, you know, but these have black legs this year. But maybe you haven't noticed -- -- "

He stopped in midcareer. The preposterous idea that she could be interested in examining the legs of mosquitoes had too evidently outraged Hermione's mother. Fothergil, flushed and embarrassed, tried to make it better and made it worse.

"Maybe you haven't noticed their -- er -- limbs," said Fothergil.

"I have not," she murmured.

Fothergil desperately persevered.

"We don't see so much as we used to of -- of -- -- " (I am sure he didn't know he was going to finish the sentence when he began it, but he plunged ahead) -- "of the Queen Anne style of architecture."

With visible relief, and yet with a lurking suspicion, she assented. And Fothergil, feeling himself on safe ground at last, went on:

"Don't you think she was one of the most interesting queens in English history -- Queen Anne? Do you remember the anecdote -- -- ?

But she checked him, frightened again:

"I do not wish to hear it, Mr. Finch," she said.

"But," said Fothergil, "She was a most unexceptional Queen -- not like, er -- not like -- well, Cleopatra, you know, or any of those bad ones."

Hermione's mother was silent, but it was apparent that she feared the talk was about to veer toward Cleopatra.

"When I was a girl," she said, "the lives of queens were considered rather dangerous reading for young women. You need not go into details, please."

I couldn't stand it any more myself. "If you'll just tell Hermione I called," I said, edging toward the door. Fothergil, however, stuck it out. In the frenzy of embarrassment he must have lost his head completely. For as I left I heard him be- ginning:

"Did you read the story in the papers today of the man who killed his wife? Crimes of passion are becoming more and more frequent. . . ."

PRISON REFORM AND POISE

AREN'T you just crazy about prison reform?

The most wonderful man talked to us -- to our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know -- about it the other evening.

It made me feel that I'd be willing to do anything, simply ANYTHING! -- to help those poor, unfortunate convicts. Collect money, you know, or give talks, or read books about them, or make any other sacrifice.

Even get them jobs. One ought to help them to start over again, you know.

Though as for hiring one of them myself, or rather getting Papa to -- well, really, you know, one must draw the line somewhere!

But it's a perfectly fascinating subject to take up, prison reform is.

It gives one such a sense of brotherhood -- and of service -- it's so broadening, don't you think? -- taking up things like that?

And one must be broad. I ask myself every night before I go to bed: "Have I been BROAD today? Or have I failed?"

Though, of course, one can be TOO broad, don't you think?

What I mean is, one must not be so broad that one loses one's poise in the midst of things.

Poise! That is what this age needs!