She carried her wet canvas out on to the landing beyond the warped door.
If, while Dorothy swept, Amory lingered a little over her brush-washing and palette-cleaning, and then proceeded to make of the wasted paint a paper "butterfly," she had this justification--that she swept as badly as she washed up. Moreover, she was already running over beforehand the heads of a really elevating talk she wanted to have with Cosimo on the subject of Eugenics. Cosimo was the kind of man you could talk to sanely and sensibly about these things; he could discuss them with her in the proper inquiring spirit, and without either mock modesty or a thought behind. He despised mock modesty and the thought behind as much as Amory herself despised them; he had frequently said so. That, with the knowledge that she herself was by a good deal the cleverer of the two, seemed to Amory the really satisfactory relation. They were "the best of pals." Amory liked the expression. It was so unlike Glenerne and the leers about the aquarium corner.
Therefore, as Dorothy, sweeping, asked her how her aunt's engagement-party had gone off, she replied with an almost indulgent laugh. Dorothy wouldn't believe (she said) how absurd her aunt could be. Dorothy, burrowing with the broom into a corner, laughed too.
"All aunts are, my dear. (Mind your foot.) Don't talk to me about aunts. I've got some, thanks. (Sorry, and I'm afraid I shall sweep all the dust on you if you stand there.) Our latest is a frightful row between Aunt Emmie, that's the one in Calcutta, and Aunt Eliza, the one in Wales. All about some diamonds everybody'd forgotten all about, but some stupid old busybody of a bank-manager must go and turn them up, and Aunt Emmie says grandfather gave them to _her_, and Aunt Eliza says he gave them to _her_, and ... well, there you are. The less said about those diamonds the better in a family like ours, _I_ should have said. (Oh dear, Amory, _do_ stand somewhere else!) Cousin Clara says they're pretty sure to be the wages of somebody's sin. Talk about your one aunt! I've a dozen, half of 'em not quite right in their heads ... (Amory, if you don't move I shall hit you with the brush!)..."
Amory moved, finished her "butterfly," and began to cut it out with a pair of scissors.