“I think she’ll be over it. Miss Frazier’s away on vacation, and I need Petra more than ordinary these days.”
“You seem a trifle brutal, darling. Don’t you believe the girl had a headache? I do. She looked terrible. I know Clare didn’t believe it, but then she hadn’t seen her. I heard Clare telling Lowell it was temper. I thought that was rather horrid of Clare, I must say. And now you are almost as heartless.”
“Cynthia Pryne Allen! Do I hear criticism of Clare? I’d better take your temperature. You look all right but I am afraid you must be delirious!”
Cynthia leaned back in her chair. She had finished her grapefruit and black coffee. That was all she allowed herself for breakfast, having no ambition to compete with her Harry in avoirdupois.
“No, I’m not criticizing Clare. Not exactly. But lately—well, lately I’ve sort of come to understand Petra a little better. I feel as if I have, anyway. I don’t think things are so frightfully easy for her at Green Doors. Not that Clare means to be unkind. Oh, hardly! But their temperaments don’t jibe, that’s all. Clare can’t take it in, that any one can be so simple as Petra is. That’s the trouble, I think. She thinks Petra’s simplicity is always covering some design. But Petra hasn’t any design. She’s just a healthy, nice, rather sweet girl. She seems sweet to me, anyway. Just these last few weeks I’ve grown fond of her. You don’t have to wonder where you are with her, ever. Why, I told Clare just last night that if I had a daughter I’d adore her to be a second Petra. She’d be so _comfortable_ to live with.”
“Yes? And what did Clare reply, if anything?”
“That made me rather cross, Lewis. She said that I didn’t know Petra. She said she was ‘deep.’”
“Did she mean it as insult or compliment?”
“Dear Lewis! When one woman calls another deep!—It has looked to me lately—nights at the Country Club, when they were all there together, the Farwells and Dick and Neil (that simply grand McCloud person, you know)—that Clare was almost jealous of Petra. Harry’s got an idea that that’s why Neil doesn’t come to Green Doors any more. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s seeing Petra secretly, somewhere else. I think Clare suspects it too. She’s almost insufferable, anyway, the way she questions Petra as to where she has been and what she has been doing. And she doesn’t mind who’s there, listening. It makes one very uncomfortable. It’s hateful for Petra.”