Now Lena detested babies as sticky and order-destroying vermin, but in
relief she said: "A baby? Oh, how lovely!"
"Come," said Mrs. Lenox. "The proper study of womanhood is baby." Lena
went out to find a very small person in a very tottering condition,
steered up and down the hall by another be-capped maid who was holding
tight to his rear petticoats, while Mrs. Lenox trotted by his side,
pulling a woolly lamb that baa'd with enchanting precision, and allowing
her skirts to be worried by a small puppy, whose business in life was to
bite anything hard that lay on the floor or that wiggled. Mrs. Lenox and
Miss Elton sat down on the floor to towsle and to be towsled amid
laughter and hair-pulling and frantic yelps from the puppy, while Lena
looked on and said: "Isn't he cunning?" and wondered whether she ought
to sit on the floor or not. She wondered if this were indeed the
millionaire Mrs. Lenox of whom she read with awe from the "In the swing"
column as being present at such and such "society functions", thus and
thus attired.
Somehow Mrs. Lenox, seated on the floor, with her hair over one eye,
disconcerted Lena more than any amount of grandeur would have done. She
felt as one might who should catch the Venus of Melos cutting capers.
Then the redoubtable lady jumped up, tucked in a few hair-pins, gave a
final shake to her small son and said: "I dressed little Frank myself this afternoon. Don't you think I did a
good job? Dressing a baby combines all the pleasures of the chase with
the requirements of the exact sciences, Miss Quincy. Now let's go down
and have some tea before big Frank gets home. I think we've time for a
little friendly chat."
This time Lena followed with greater sense of security. She knew her
dress was pretty and becoming, though inexpensive; and as for
conversation, that to Lena's mind meant clothes and society, with which
she felt a journalistic familiarity.
"Perhaps you prefer cream in your tea?" said Mrs. Lenox, with hand
poised over the little table.
"No, thank you, I like lemon," answered Lena, who had never tasted it
before and now thought it very nasty indeed. Then she wondered why she
had told such a small useless lie.
But it was comfortable to be in a big lovely room with a pile of logs
blazing in a great fireplace, and soft lamps shedding a glow rather than
making spots of light. She wished she had, like Madeline, picked out a
very easy chair instead of the stiff one she had selected, but she felt
too shy to move until Mrs. Lenox suggested it, and then she was
embarrassed because she was embarrassed. She wondered if she should ever
be able to do things like these women, without thinking of what she was
doing.