"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.
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