"I never knew a painted Jezebel so perfectly delightful as Kitty. Even Aunt Eliza can't resist her."
Mrs. McBain, generally known to her intimates as "Aunt Eliza," was a connection of Nan's on the paternal side. She was a lady of Scottish antecedents and Early Victorian tendencies, to whom the modern woman and her methods were altogether anathema. She regarded her niece as walking--or, more truly, pirouetting aggressively--along the road which leads to destruction.
Penelope folded a pair of renovated stockings and tossed them into her work-basket.
"The Seymours want us to dine there on Thursday. I suppose you can?" she asked.
"With all the pleasure in life. Their chef is a dream," murmured Nan reminiscently.
Nan lit a cigarette and seated herself on the humpty-dumpty cushion by the fire.
"But I do care--extremely." she averred. "It isn't my little inside which cares. It's a purely external feeling which likes to have everything just right. If it's going to be a dinner, I want it perfect from soup to savoury."
Penelope regarded her with a glint of amusement.
"I know I am--about the way things are done. What pleasure is there in anything which offends your sense of fitness?"
"You bestow far too much importance on the outside of the cup and platter."
"_Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais--Je bois dans mon verre._" she quoted, frivolously obstinate.
"Bah!" Penelope grunted, "The critical faculty is over-developed in you, my child."
"Not a bit! Would you like to drink champagne out of a kitchen tea-cup? Of course not. I merely apply the same principle to other things. For instance, if the man I married ate peas with a knife and made loud juicy noises when he drank his soup, not all the sterling qualities he might possess would compensate. Whereas if he had perfect manners, I believe I could forgive him half the sins in the Decalogue."
"Manners are merely an external," protested Penelope, although privately she acknowledged to a sneaking agreement with Nan's point of view.
"Well," retorted Nan. "We've got to live with externals, haven't we? It's only on rare occasions that people admit each other on to their souls' doorsteps. Besides"--argumentatively--"decent manners _aren't_ an external. They're the 'outward and visible sign.' Why"--waxing enthusiastic--"if a man just opens a door or puts some coal on the fire for you, it involves a whole history of the homage and protective instinct of man for woman."