Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/392

Rh "I think you misjudge her there, dear. She has been asking"

"To help?"

"Yes, and all about it," said Mrs. Bunting, with a transient pink. "She keeps asking questions about why we are having the election and what it is all about, and why Harry is a candidate and all that. She wants to go into it quite deeply. I can't answer half the things she asks."

"And that's why she keeps up those long conversations with Mr. Melville, I suppose, and why Fred goes about neglecting Mabel"

"My dear!" said Mrs. Bunting.

"I wouldn't have her canvassing with us for anything," said Miss Glendower. "She'd spoil everything. She is frivolous and satirical. She looks at you with incredulous eyes, she seems to blight all one's earnestness I don't think you quite understand, dear Mrs. Bunting, what this election and my studies mean to me—and Harry. She comes across all that—like a contradiction."

"Surely, my dear! I've never heard her contradict."

"Oh, she doesn't contradict. But she— There is something about her— One feels that things that are most important and vital are nothing to her. Don't you feel it? She comes from another world to us."

Mrs. Bunting remained judicial. Adeline dropped to a lower key again. "I think," she said, "anyhow, that we're taking her very easily. How do we know what she is? Down there, out there, she may be anything. She may have had excellent reasons for coming to land"