omehow being cared for, managed and deprecated by Aunt Maggie and
Aunt Eleanor. After a time she perceived that Katharine was outside the
community in some way, and, suddenly, she threw aside her wisdom and
gentleness and concern and began to laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" Katharine asked.

A joke so foolish and unfilial wasn't worth explaining.

"It was nothing--ridiculous--in the worst of taste, but still, if you
half shut your eyes and looked--" Katharine half shut her eyes and
looked, but she looked in the wrong direction, and Cassandra laughed
more than ever, and was still laughing and doing her best to explain in
a whisper that Aunt Eleanor, through half-shut eyes, was like the parrot
in the cage at Stogdon House, when the gentlemen came in and Rodney
walked straight up to them and wanted to know what they were laughing
at.

"I utterly refuse to tell you!" Cassandra replied, standing up straight,
clasping her hands in front of her, and facing him. Her mockery was
delicious to him. He had not even for a second the fear that she had
been laughing at him. She was laughing because life was so adorable, so
enchanting.

"Ah, but you're cruel to make me feel the barbarity of my sex," he
replied, drawing his feet together and pressing his finger-tips upon an
imaginary opera-hat or malacca cane. "We've been discussing all sorts
of dull things, and now I shall never know what I want to know more than
anything in the world."

"You don't deceive us for a minute!" she cried. "Not for a second.
We both know that you've been enjoying yourself immensely. Hasn't he,
Katharine?"

"No," she replied, "I think he's speaking the truth. He doesn't care
much for politics."

Her words, though spoken simply, produced a curious change in the light,
sparkling atmosphere. William at once lost his look of animation and
said seriously:

"I detest politics."

"I don't think any man has the right to say that," said Cassandra,
almost severely.

"I agree. I mean that I detest politicians," he corrected himself
quickly.

"You see, I believe Cassandra is what they call a Feminist," Katharine
went on. "Or rather, she was a Feminist six months ago, but it's no good
supposing that she is now what she was then. That is one of her greatest
charms in my eyes. One never can tell." She smiled at her as an elder
sister might smile.

"Katharine, you make one feel so horribly small!" Cassandra exclaimed.

"No, no, that's not what she me