"They didn't really want to see me," said Mother. "They only called on
me to please George. He sent them probably. I have heard him speak of
Lady Fylingdales. He stays there. She is one of his oldest friends. She
is lame and nearly blind. Lady Scilly I shall never like from what I
have heard of her. Tempe, run in the garden in the sun and dry your
hair. Off you go!"
"And get a sunstroke," thought I. "Just because she wants to talk to
Aunt Gerty about the grand callers!"
So I stayed, and they have got so in the habit of not minding me that
they went on as if I really had been out broiling in the sun.
Mother began to talk very fast about the new house, and getting
visiting-cards printed, and taking her place in Society. These ladies
coming had given her thoughts a fresh jog. She nearly cried over the
bother of it all, and what George would now go expecting of her, and she
with no education and no ambition to be a smart woman, as Aunt Gerty was
continually egging her on to be, saying it was quite easy if you only
had a nice slight figure, like she has.
"Bead chains and pince-nezs won't do it as you seem to think," Mother
said. "And even if I get to be smart, I shall never get to be happy!"
"Happy!" screamed my Aunt Gertrude. "Who talked of being happy? You
don't go expecting to be happy, unless it makes you happy, as it ought,
to put your foot down on those stuck-up cats who have been leading your
husband astray all these years, and giving them a good what-for. It
would me, that's all I can say. Happiness indeed! It is something higher
than mere happiness. What you have got to do, my dear Lucy, is just to
take your call and go on--not before you've had a trip to Paris for your
clothes, though--and show them all what a pretty woman George Taylor's
despised wife is. There's an object to live for! That's your ticket, and
you've got it. He married you for your looks, now, didn't he?"
"Nothing else," said Mother sadly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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