“Naturally,” responded Flossy, with a slightly sardonic air, prompted by the acerbity with which the question was put.

“Then, if we were friends—­are friends, why have you ceased to associate with us, simply because you live in another street and a finer house?”

Flossy gave a gasp.  “Oh,” she said to herself, “it’s true.  She is jealous.  Why didn’t I appreciate it before?”

“Am I not associating with you now by calling on you, Selma?” she said aloud.  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You are calling on me, and you asked us to dinner to meet—­to meet just the people we knew already, and didn’t care to meet; but you have never asked us to meet your new friends, and you left us out when you gave your dancing party.”

“You do not dance.”

“How do you know?”

“I have never associated you with dancing.  I assumed that you did not dance.”

“What grounds had you for such an assumption?”

“Really, Selma, your catechism is most extraordinary.  Excuse my smiling.  And I don’t know how to answer your questions—­your fierce questions any better.  I didn’t ask you to my party because I supposed that you and your husband were not interested in that sort of thing, and would not know any of the people.  You have often told me that you thought they were frivolous.”

“I consider them so still.”

“Then why do you complain?”

“Because—­because you have not acted like a friend.  Your idea of friendship has been to pour into my ears, day after day, how you had been asked to dinner by this person and taken up by that person, until I was weary of the sound of your voice, but it seems not to have occurred to you, as a friend of mine, and a friend and admirer of my husband, to introduce us to people whom you were eager to know, and who might have helped him in his profession.  And now, after turning the cold shoulder on us, and omitting us from your party, because you assumed I didn’t dance, you have come here this morning, in the name of friendship, to tell me that your cousins, at last, have invited you to dinner.  And yet you think it strange that I’m not interested.  That’s the only reason you came—­to let me know that you are a somebody now; and you expected me, as a friend and a nobody, to tell you how glad I am.”

Flossy’s eyes opened wide.  Free as she was accustomed to be in her own utterances, this flow of bitter speech delivered with seer-like intensity was a new experience to her.  She did not know whether to be angry or amused by the indictment, which caused her to wince notwithstanding that she deemed it slander.  Moreover the insinuation that she had been a bore was humiliating.