"Oh Miss Dryden," she added, "can't you stop for a cup of tea? Professor Richards is here."
"How is his dentition," said Virginia absently, "equine as ever?"
After the manner of an elephant with a pebble, Henrietta's mind slowly revolved this idea and expelled it as innutritious.
"No," she answered, "we haven't touched on that interesting topic to-day. We are talking over some lectures he is to give before a Mothers' Meeting at our Workingmen's Club. We were thinking of titles likely to attract. If only you can spare a few minutes, we should be so glad to have your opinion."
"We! We! Oh," thought Virginia, "what could be more suitable! I'll just step in and have a look at them. Heaven really does the handsome thing once in a while." She merely said, "Thank you, I should be very glad of a cup of tea."
Any reasonably acute observer could certainly have constructed a fairly correct image of Henrietta after one glance at that severely useful parlor. Sociological pamphlets, reviews, the publications of the Fabian Society, filled every table. On the marble mantel-piece stood two framed photographs, one of a noted labor leader, one of George Bernard Shaw.
After due greetings, Virginia was tempted to investigate whether Miss McCall and the Professor were at one in their literary tastes, as well as in the serious matters of life. Pointing to the latter picture she asked, "Is this gentleman also a favorite of yours. Dr. Richards?"
"I don't know him. Is he a friend of yours, Miss Dryden?"
"Oh, no!" she answered, hastening to cover her slip, "I only know his plays and those two novels."
"Plays!" Henrietta joined in; "I didn't suppose he wrote anything of that sort. My interest in him is as a reformer."
"Yes, he has written one or two little things, youthful indiscretions, probably," said Virginia, quickly closing the subject. "But tell me, please, about the lectures."
Henrietta gave her a cup of acrid, lemon-embittered tea, and with much aid from the Professor expounded a plan so evolutionary that Virginia privately foresaw the workingmen's wives emerging from these lectures with an impression of themselves as hens miraculously mothering monkeys, who, rapidly passing through a period of barbarism, would finally reach their full development as incorruptible voters.
Dr. Richards and Henrietta were in no doubt as to the advisability of the course itself, the only question was of adopting a scientific or a popular nomenclature.
Their minds worked together so harmoniously that Virginia repented at having broken in on such a happy tête-à-tête, and seized on the first pause to take her departure.
