"I CAN never," said Mrs. Fetherel, "hear the bell ring without a
shudder."
Her unruffled aspect--she was the kind of woman whose emotions never
communicate themselves to her clothes--and the conventional background
of the New York drawing-room, with its pervading implication of an
imminent tea-tray and of an atmosphere in which the social functions
have become purely reflex, lent to her declaration a relief not lost on
her cousin Mrs. Clinch, who, from the other side of the fireplace,
agreed with a glance at the clock, that it _was_ the hour for bores.
"Bores!" cried Mrs. Fetherel impatiently. "If I shuddered at _them_, I
should have a chronic ague!"
She leaned forward and laid a sparkling finger on her cousin's shabby
black knee. "I mean the newspaper clippings," she whispered.