"Is that all Claud does, or, rather, his friends do?" I asked.

"No, it's not," she said. "Ever since he went to Oxford he has changed
completely. He has got into his head that we are a self-centered family,
and that I am a prejudiced mother, when it is the only thing I am not.
I may be everything else for all I know, I may be daily breaking all
the commandments without knowing it! But a prejudiced mother I am not!
Before he went to Oxford he came into my bedroom one morning, and he
said that he thought Maud and Edith were quite the most beautiful girls
he had ever seen, and he had sat behind some famous beauty in a theatre
a few nights before. I didn't ask him! I was suffering from neuralgia at
the time, I remember, and he might, under the circumstances, have agreed
just to soothe me, but he said it of his own accord, and he wondered if
they would go up to London and walk down Bond Street with him. I said
it should be arranged. They walked with him three times up and down Bond
Street; he only asked for once. I am only telling you this because you
will then realize what this change in him means to me. He came back
from Oxford after one term and he said nothing about the girls' beauty,
although I thought them improved. I didn't say so; I made some little
joke about Bond Street, which he pretended not to understand. So I just
said I thought the girls improved, or rather were looking very pretty,
and he said, 'My dear mother, we must learn to look at these things from
the point of view of the outsider. Place yourself in the position of a
man of the world seeing them for the first time.'"

To begin with, Aunt Anna proceeded to explain, she could never place
herself in a position to which she was not born; she did not think it
right. She said that Claud then urged her to look at it from stranger's
point of view, since that of man of the world was impracticable, which
Aunt Anna said was a thing no mother could do, nor would she wish to do
it. She left such things to actresses. Talking of actresses reminded her
that Claud had even found fault with Maud as an actress, when every
one knew how very excellent she was. Several newspapers, the Southshire
Herald in particular, had alluded to her as one of our most talented
actresses.

"We had a professional down to coach her, and he said there was really
nothing he could teach her. He was a very nice man, and had all his
meals with us. I went," continued Aunt Anna, "to see the gre