Nothing of the sort, however. Mrs. Russell sat there, waiting, all
smiles and affability, for the sole purpose of inviting Angelica to
visit Buena Vista. She had had a letter from Eddie, in which he had
rather severely requested her to show all due civility to his future
wife.
"He really means it!" she had said to her husband. "I hoped he’d
forgotten. I really thought the thing had blown over. Beastly, isn’t it?
Imagine her here!"
"It doesn’t frighten me," Dr. Russell said jauntily.
"Satyr!" she said. "You can’t be trusted out of my sight!"
And both he and she were pleased and proud of his senile impudence.
Mrs. Russell had been chatting with--or perhaps to--Mrs. Kennedy for a
long time, about God knows what--the war, for one thing. Their views
were very dissimilar; Mrs. Kennedy hadn’t a trace of patriotism. She
maintained that it was a bad thing to kill so many young men, no matter
why it was done. She wasn’t interested in German perfidy. She only hoped
it would soon be over, no matter how. It wouldn’t make any difference
who won, she said.
"Would you like to live under German rule," demanded Mrs. Russell, "and
have some brutal Prussian officer swearing at you and ill-treating you?"
"I don’t believe officers would ever bother about me, American or
German," she replied. "What would they be doing, hanging around where I
was working? No, ma’am. Poor people haven’t got anything to lose. They
don’t feel the same about their country; I dare say because they don’t
own any of it. Of course, if those Germans were to come here, they’d
very likely take away your house and your jewelry and so on; but they
wouldn’t be likely to trouble _me_."
"But your daughter? She’s a very beautiful girl, you know. How would you
like some unspeakable Hun to insult her--or worse?"
Mrs. Kennedy was silent. She felt in her heart that nothing much worse
than what had happened could ever happen to her child. She simply
listened to her visitor’s accounts of outrages with decent, womanly
interest.
She was included in Mrs. Russell’s invitation to Angelica to spend a
week-end at Buena Vista, but she refused, as she was obviously intended
to do.
"Thank you kindly," she said. "I haven’t the time."
"Why don’t you go, mother?" Angelica asked her, out of curiosity, when
they were alone again. "I should think you’d like to make a visit in a
fine house like that. And it’s going to be mine some day!"
"I don’t think so," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I don’t believe the Almighty
would allow such a thing. No, Angelica, there’s many a slip ’twixt the
cup and the lip."
"Not when your hand’s steady."
Mrs. Kennedy was a little bewildered at having her time-honoured maxim
treated imaginatively.
"Even then," she said, after an instant, "some one can come behind and
give you a shove; or the Almighty can interfere."
Angelica, at the zenith of her triumph, invited guest of Mrs. Russell,
publicly acknowledged as Eddie’s betrothed, smiled.
"He won’t!" she said. "He’s on my side!"