The very fact that they were, as she said, noble women, that their minds moved with the ponderous exactitude characteristic of so many good executives, made their society all the more trying to Lydia. She wearied of them, wearied, as Mariana in the Moated Grange. She had so often asked Benny not to do this to her and after all it was her house.
"You're very hard, my dear," said her companion--"very hard and very ignorant and very young. If you could only find an interest in such work as Mrs. Galton is doing----"
"Good heavens, was this a benevolent plot on your part to find me an interest?"
Miss Bennett looked dignified and a little stubborn, as if she were accustomed to being misunderstood, as if Lydia ought to have known that she had had a reason for what she did. As a matter of fact, she had no plan; she was not a plotter. That was one of the difficulties between her and Lydia. Lydia arranged her life, controlled her time and her surroundings. Miss Bennett amiably drifted, letting events and her friends control. She could never understand why Lydia held her responsible for situations which it seemed to her simply happened, and yet she could never resist pretending that she had deliberately brought them about. She began to think now that it had been her idea, not Mrs. Galton's, to get Lydia interested in prison reform.
"No one can be happy, Lydia, without an unselfish interest, something outside of themselves."
Lydia smiled. There was something pathetic in poor little ineffective Benny trying to arrange her life for her.
"I contrive to be fairly happy, thank you, Benny. I've got to leave you, because I have an engagement at Eleanor's at four, and it's ten minutes before now."
"You'll be killed if you drive so recklessly."
That was something that it was better not to tell, so Lydia went away laughing, leaving Miss Bennett to wonder, as she always did after one of these interviews, how it was possible to feel so superior to Lydia when they were apart and so ineffectual when they were together. She always came to the same conclusion--that she was betrayed by her own fineness; that she was more aware of shades, of traditions than this little daughter of a workingman. Lydia was not little. She was half a foot taller than Adeline Bennett's own modest five-feet-two, but the adjective expressed a latent wish. Miss Bennett often introduced it into her descriptions. A nice little man, a clever little woman, a dear little person were some of her favorite tags. They made her bulk larger in her own vision.