'No; Miss Birdseye doesn't give parties. She's an ascetic.'
'Oh, well, we have had our dinner,' Ransom rejoined, laughing.
His hostess sat silent a moment, with her eyes on the ground; she looked at such times as if she were hesitating greatly between several things she might say, all so important that it was difficult to choose.
'I think it might interest you,' she remarked presently. 'You will hear some discussion, if you are fond of that. Perhaps you wouldn't agree,' she added, resting her strange eyes on him.
'Perhaps I shouldn't—I don't agree with everything,' he said, smiling and stroking his leg.
'Don't you care for human progress?' Miss Chancellor went on.
'I don't know—I never saw any. Are you going to show me some?'
'I can show you an earnest effort towards it. That's the most one can be sure of. But I am not sure you are worthy.'
'Is it something very Bostonian? I should like to see that,' said Basil Ransom.
'There are movements in other cities. Mrs. Farrinder goes everywhere; she may speak to-night.'
'Mrs. Farrinder, the celebrated——?'
'Yes, the celebrated; the great apostle of the emancipation of women. She is a great friend of Miss Birdseye.'
'And who is Miss Birdseye?'
'She is one of our celebrities. She is the woman in the world, I suppose, who has laboured most for every wise reform. I think I ought to tell you,' Miss Chancellor went on in a moment, 'she was one of the earliest, one of the most passionate, of the old Abolitionists.'
She had thought, indeed, she ought to tell him that, and it threw her into a little tremor of excitement to do so. Yet, if she had been afraid he would show some irritation at this news, she was disappointed at the geniality with which he exclaimed:
'Why, poor old lady—she must be quite mature!'
It was therefore with some severity that she rejoined:
'She will never be old. She is the youngest spirit I know. But if you are not in sympathy, perhaps you had better not come,' she went on.
'In sympathy with what, dear madam?' Basil Ransom asked, failing still, to her perception, to catch the tone of real seriousness. 'If, as you say, there is to be a discussion, there will be different sides, and of course one can't sympathise with both.'
'Yes, but every one will, in his way—or in her way—plead the cause of the new truths. If you don't care for them, you won't go with us.'
'I tell you I haven't the least idea what they are! I have never yet encountered in the world any but old truths —as old as the sun and moon. How can I know? But
'It isn't Boston—it's humanity!' Miss Chancellor, as she made this remark, rose from her chair, and her movement seemed to say that she consented. But before she quitted her kinsman to get ready, she observed to him that she was sure he knew what she meant; he was only pretending he didn't.
'Well, perhaps, after all, I have a general idea,' he confessed; 'but don't you see how this little reunion will give me a chance to fix it?'
She lingered an instant, with her anxious face. 'Mrs. Farrinder will fix it!' she said; and she went to prepare herself.
It was in this poor young lady's nature to be anxious, to have scruple within scruple and to forecast the consequences of things. She returned in ten minutes, in her bonnet, which she had apparently assumed in recognition of Miss Birdseye's asceticism. As she stood there drawing on her gloves—her visitor had fortified himself against Mrs. Farrinder by another glass of wine—she declared to him that she quite repented of having proposed to him to go; something told her that he would be an unfavourable element.
'Why, is it going to be a spiritual
'Well, I have heard at Miss Birdseye's some inspirational speaking.' Olive Chancellor was determined to look him straight in the face as she said this; her sense of the way it might strike him operated as a cogent, not as a deterrent, reason.
'Why, Miss Olive, it's just got up on purpose for me!' cried the young Mississippian, radiant, and clasping his hands. She thought him very handsome as he said this, but reflected that unfortunately men didn't care for the truth, especially the new kinds, in proportion as they were good-looking. She had, however, a moral resource that she could always fall back upon; it had already been a comfort to her, on occasions of acute feeling, that she hated men, as a class, anyway. 'And I want so much to see an old Abolitionist; I have never laid eyes on one,' Basil Ransom added.
'Of course you couldn't see one in the South; you were too afraid of them to let them come there!' She was now trying to think of something she might say that would be sufficiently disagreeable to make him cease to insist on accompanying her; for, strange to record—if anything, in a person of that intense sensibility, be stranger than any other—her second thought with regard to having asked him had deepened with the elapsing moments into an unreasoned terror of the effect of his presence. 'Perhaps Miss Birdseye won't like you,' she went on, as they waited for the carriage.
'I don't know; I reckon she will,' said Basil Ransom good-humouredly. He evidently had no intention of giving up his opportunity.
From the window of the dining-room, at that moment, they heard the carriage drive up. Miss Birdseye lived at the South End; the distance was considerable, and Miss Chancellor had ordered a hackney-coach, it being one of the advantages of living in Charles Street that stables were near. The logic of her conduct was none of the clearest; for if she had been alone she would have proceeded to her destination by the aid of the street-car; not from
