'Yes?' Daphne was vague, hiding how much she disapproved of church
things.
'Now I'm afraid I'm used to a rather different sort of service from
those Kate attends,' Mrs. Frampton continued. 'I'm old-fashioned, I
know. Kate's church goes a touch too high for me.'
Something in her visitor's face, a certain blankness, suggested to her
that probably Daphne knew no difference between high and low, but
condemned both with impartial unfairness. She remembered that Alix
hadn't been brought up to go to any sort of church. Alix, being of a
later generation, had indeed a fairly open mind on these matters; but
Daphne, the product of a more pronounced and condemning age, rejected
with emphasis. The Christian religion, as taught in churches, was to her
pernicious, retrograde, the hampering relic of a darker age. Some
glimmering of this attitude filtered through to Mrs. Frampton, and
flustered her. She added, 'But of course we can't all think the same way
about things, can we?... I hope you enjoyed your trip round the world,
Mrs. Sandomir.'
'Very much, thank you.'
'You visited the Balkans, didn't you? That must have been very alarming
and wild. I'm sure it was wonderfully brave of you to go there, with all
this upset, and all the natives so unsettled. I'm afraid I shouldn't
have had the courage.'
'The upset,' said Daphne, 'was less advanced than it is now, when I was
there. I had a most interesting time....' But not really, in the main,
suitable to tell Mrs. Frampton about, so she rapidly selected.
'The Bulgarian babies--you never saw anything so pleasant. You'd love
them, Mrs. Frampton. You should go there some time. And their teeth come
through when they're about six weeks old, for some reason. It's just as
well, because their ideas about milk cleanliness are most behindhand. I
talked to a sort of mothers' meeting about it, but I don't think they
even began to understand. I expect my Bulgarian wasn't idiomatic enough.
Oh dear, the _dirt_ of those infants....'
'Fancy! It does seem a wickedness not to keep little babies clean,
doesn't it? There's one at a house in this road--Primmerose--and I'm
sure it goes to one's heart to see the way it's kept.'
Kate said, fastidiously, 'Those Primmerose people aren't nice in any
way, I'm afraid. There are some very regrettable people come settling
round here lately--people one can't dream of knowing. It's a great
pity.'
'People will settle, won't they,' Daphne said vaguely. 'It's better
perhaps than being unsettled, like the Balkan people.' Daphne never
punned except in absence of mind, rightly believing the habit to rise
from weakness of intellect; but she was thinking now not of Clapton nor
of the Balkan people, but of an address she was giving that evening to a
meeting of the N.U.W.S.S. on her recent experiences, and which she had
only inadequately prepared. She pulled herself together, however, and
became charming, attentive, and intelligent for the rest of tea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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