Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/365

 "Who is Murray?"

Anne pondered. "Well, he's a family friend. We girls were brought up on him."

"Brought up on him?"

"Yes. Anything Murray likes we are expected to like. If he doesn't like things we don't."

"Oh."

"He's over there by Mrs. Winchell."

Maxwell looked and knew the type. "But you don't agree about Dickens?"

"No. And Amy says that Murray's wiser than I. But I'm not sure. Amy thinks that all men are wiser than women."

Maxwell chuckled. Anne was refreshing. She was far from modern in her modes of thought. She was—he hunted for the word and found it—mid-Victorian in her attitude of mind.

He wondered what Winifred Reed would think of her. Winifred lived in Chicago. She was athletic and intellectual. She wrote tabloid dramas, drove her own car, dressed smartly, and took a great interest in Maxwell's career. She wrote to him once a week, and he always answered her letters. Now and then she failed to write, and he missed her letters and told her so. It was altogether a pleasant friendship.

She hated the idea of Maxwell's farm. She thought it a backward step. "Are you going to 359