She was speaking. "Robert has always insisted on explaining and going over business matters with me. I inherited the same as he did under our father's will, you see, Selina. From the start he has regularly brought me slips of paper written over with figures and those worrying ditto marks. I listen while he goes over them, but when he goes I drop 'em in the fire. I know it's right if Robert says so."
Selina turned stubborn again. She felt unaccountably irritated. "Well, I don't just see the merit in that, myself, Auntie. Somehow it doesn't seem quite fair to Papa."
"Selina!" from her mother scandalized. "Do you realize what you are saying? And _who_ you're talking to?"
Aunt Juanita being seen about the matter again, thought that Selina might do, and further agreed that she ask Maud and Juliette if they wanted to come and help her.
From this interview with Aunt Juanita, Selina went straight across the street to the Addisons' to see Maud and find out.
She found her in her own room with an array of books, including a dictionary, much paper, and a purple smudge from her ink bottle, on her nose. Energetic, restless, and dissatisfied Maud!
"I've turned on china painting; it was pretence with me from the start, Selina. Do you realize you haven't been over here for--well--almost weeks? I'm working at my German again. If Marcus and Miss Pocahontas did German verse into English, and even got some of the cleverest of it printed in the back of a magazine, why shouldn't I try what I can do? I'm working at some of the easier verses of Heine. Sit down and tell me about your trip to Eadston."
Selina told her about the wedding and then explained her mission. "I don't grasp in the least what Aunt Juanita's about, Maud. She never explains. But she and Mrs. Higginson want to pay us to help 'em advance what she calls the cause of woman."
"It's a phrase going the rounds," from Maudie. "I've run on it a good many times lately. Selina, I'm not a snob, and neither are you, but I must say I'd like to know and to work with Mrs. Higginson. And it's not because she's our richest woman, in the finest home, and it's not because she and Mr. Higginson give about everything that's given in the way of gifts to the city. I think probably it's because that sort of person _must_ be fine to know, and interesting."