Aileen and her father lived in an old wooden house with a modern facade of
stucco, and surrounded by a garden filled with somewhat blighted
geraniums, fuchsias, sweet alicias, heliotrope, mignonette, and other
nineteenth-century posies beloved of Mrs. Lawton in her romantic and
innocent youth.
Sibyl and Alice Thorndyke's father had left his girls a square bow-windowed
mansard-roofed double house, built in eighteen-seventy-eight, and
unreclaimed. With it went a moderate income, and Alice lived on under the
ugly old roof chaperoned by an aunt, who had been chosen from a liberal
assortment of relatives because she was almost deaf, quite myopic, and so
terrified of draughts that her absence when convenient could always be
counted on.
II
All of these young women belonged to Alexina's personal set, and joined the
class in socialism, as they joined anything the stronger spirits among
them suggested; and they attended as regularly as could be expected of
"parasites" who were mainly interested in society, dress, poker, and some
absorbing creature of the other sex.
Mr. Kirkpatrick hated them all with the exception of Alexina, Aileen, Mrs.
Price Ruyler, the half-French wife of a New Yorker, recently adopted by
California, and Mrs. Hunter, who had joined out of curiosity, having read a
certain amount of socialism, but never met a socialist.
She confided to Mrs.
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