But she felt insecure. Her chair was out in the open, exposed to their
gaze, and it was a hard-slatted, quivery, slippery church-parlor chair,
likely to collapse publicly and without warning. It was impossible to
sit on it without folding the hands and listening piously.
She wanted to kick the chair and run. It would make a magnificent
clatter.
She saw that Vida Sherwin was watching her. She pinched her wrist, as
though she were a noisy child in church, and when she was decent and
cramped again, she listened.
Mrs. Dawson opened the meeting by sighing, "I'm sure I'm glad to see you
all here today, and I understand that the ladies have prepared a number
of very interesting papers, this is such an interesting subject, the
poets, they have been an inspiration for higher thought, in fact wasn't
it Reverend Benlick who said that some of the poets have been as much an
inspiration as a good many of the ministers, and so we shall be glad to
hear----"
The poor lady smiled neuralgically, panted with fright, scrabbled about
the small oak table to find her eye-glasses, and continued, "We
will first have the pleasure of hearing Mrs.
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