"She may not have been able to deny that it was natural," Mary observed,
"but I'd bet she didn't like it."

"It's only fair to Paula to say," Miss Wollaston insisted, "that she did
nothing to exhibit a feeling of that sort. But when, at John's
suggestion, I spoke of the possibility of having in the Cravens and the
Blakes,--the Cravens are very musical, you know--and Wallace Hood who
would be really hurt if we left him out, Paula came nearer to being
downright rude than she often allows herself to be. She said among other
things that she didn't propose to have March subjected to a
'suffocating' affair like that. She said she wanted him free to
interrupt as often as he liked and tell them how rotten they were. That
was her phrase. When I observed that Mr. March didn't impress me as the
sort of person who could conceivably wish to be rude as that she said he
could no more remember to be polite when he heard those songs for the
first time than she herself could sing them in corsets. She summed it
up by saying that it wasn't going to be a polite affair and the fewer
polite people there were, hanging about, the better. There was,
naturally, nothing I could say to that."

"I should think not," Mary agreed, exhaling rather explosively an
enormous cloud of smoke. "Poor Aunt Lucile!" Her commiseration didn't
sound more than skin deep.

"The matter rested there," the elder woman went on, "until your father
received Rush's telegram that you were coming to-day. Then he took
matters into his own hands and gave me a list of the people he wanted
asked. There are to be about a dozen besides ourselves at dinner and
perhaps as many more are to come after."