Her social experience has probably shown her that two people may talk so long together as to become utterly bored. With an anxious eye she sees that Jack Quarterback has been talking for half an hour to Ida Vergil, the clever young Latinist from Vassar. She bears down upon them, dragging reluctant in her wake Thomas Pundit, a prize-winner from the verdant shades of Princeton. Now in breaking up this particular tête-à-tête, the châtelaine is making the mistake of her life. Ida has been listening with the deepest interest to Jack’s story of how he stood X—— on his head and made the famous end-run that saved the day for Yale. At this moment her indifference to all the classic authors is supreme. She greets Pundit as coldly as if he were indeed a Latin lexicon instead of a fairly good-looking young man. In this magical hour the glitter of his prizes is as nothing to her.
The over-zealous hostess perceives she has made a mistake, though she played the game according to her rules. If either party had shown signs of distress, if Ida had yawned behind her fan or Jack had cast furtive glances around the room indicating a desire to escape, Mrs. Anxious would have been justified in her manœuver. A certain hostess who lived not a hundred miles from the Hub used to irritate her guests very much by breaking up the conversation at the expiration of what she considered the time-limit. She entertained so charmingly in other respects that people enjoyed going to her house. But they disliked very much her habit of interrupting a talk. Most persons prefer to direct their own affairs. The guiding hand of the hostess should be felt rather than seen.
While her guests may rebel at the social maternalism which hampers their freedom of action, they prefer Mrs. Anxious to the inert or cold and formal house-mistress who seems quite indifferent to their welfare. The neglectful hostess may be lazy or inexperienced, or she may lack the true spirit of hospitality. In the first case her guests will forgive her if she is trying to do her best. Since laziness is a form of selfishness, the woman who takes no pains to provide entertainment for her friends is seldom popular. The worst offender, however, is the hostess who is so much occupied with her own amusements that she has neither time nor thought to bestow on other people. The question naturally arises in their minds, “Why did she invite us? Was it simply to show us her finely appointed household?”