# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Poor Dear Mamma and Fothergil Finch

POOR DEAR MAMMA AND FOTHERGIL FINCH
(Hermione's Boswell Loquitur)
HERMIONE'S mother, who has figured so often as "Poor dear Mamma" in these pages, has come out definitely for Suffrage. Someone told her that there was an alliance between the liquor interests and the anti-Suffragists and she believed it, and it shocked her.
Since the activities of her daughter have brought her into contact with Modern Thought her life has been chiefly passed in one or another of three phases: She has just been shocked, she is being shocked, or she fears that she is about to be shocked.
She is nearing fifty and rather stout, though her figure is still not bad. She has an abundance of chestnut hair, all her own, and naturally wavy; her hands are pretty, her feet are pretty, her face is pretty. Her mouth is very small, almost disproportionately so, and her eyes are very large and blue and very wide open. She was intended for a placid woman, but Hermione and Modern Thought have made complete placidity impossible. She has ​a fondness for rich brocades and pretty fans and chocolate candy and big bowls of roses and comfortable chairs. When she was Hermione's age she used to do water color sketches; the outlines were penciled in by her drawing teacher, and she washed on the color very smoothly and neatly; but she heard a great many stories concerning the dissolute lives that artists lead and she gave it up. Nevertheless, she sometimes says: "Hermione comes by her interest in Art quite naturally."
Fothergil Finch and I called recently. Hermione was not in, and her mother suggested that we wait for her. Hermione's mother looks upon all of Hermione's friends with more or less suspicion, and she would not permit Fothergil in particular to be about the place for a moment if she were not obliged to; but she does not have the requisite sternness of character to resist her daughter. Fothergil, knowing that he is not approved of, scarcely does himself justice when Hermione's mother is present; although he endeavors to avoid offending her.
"Have you seen the play, Young America?" asked Fothergil, searching for a safe topic of conversation.
A little ripple of alarm immediately ruffled the lakeblue innocence of her eyes.
"If it is a Problem Play, I have not," she said. "I consider such things dangerous." ​"But it isn't, you know," said Fothergil eagerly. "It's a—a—it's a perfectly nice play. It's about a dog!"
"About a dog!" Her eyebrows went up, and her mouth rounded itself with the conviction that no perfectly nice play could possibly be about a dog. "I think that is dreadfully Coarse!" she said.
"But it isn't," protested Fothergil. "It's just the sort of thing you'd like."
"Indeed!" She felt slightly insulted at his assumption of what she would like, and dismissed the subject with a wave of her pretty hand. Fothergil tried again.
"I hope," he said ingratiatingly, "that you haven't been bothered much by mosquitoes." She looked a bit frightened, but said nothing, and he dashed on determinedly. "You know, this is a new variety of mosquitoes we've been having this year. Most of them have stripes on their legs, you know, but these have black legs this year. But maybe you haven't noticed——"
He stopped in midcareer. The preposterous idea that she could be interested in examining the legs of mosquitoes had too evidently outraged Hermione's mother. Fothergil, flushed and embarrassed, tried to make it better and made it worse.
"Maybe you haven't noticed their—er—limbs," said Fothergil. ​"I have not," she murmured.
Fothergil desperately persevered.
"We don't see so much as we used to of— of——" (I am sure he didn't know how he was going to finish the sentence when he began it, but he plunged ahead) "of the Queen Anne style of architecture."
With visible relief, and yet with a lurking suspicion, she assented. And Fothergil, feeling himself on safe ground at last, went on:
"Don't you think she was one of the most interesting queens in English history—Queen Anne? Do you remember the anecdote——"
But she checked him, frightened again:
"I do not wish to hear it, Mr. Finch," she said.
"But," said Fothergil, "she was a most unexceptionable Queen—not like, er—not like—well, Cleopatra, you know, or any of those bad ones."
Hermione's mother was silent, but it was apparent that she feared the talk was about to veer toward Cleopatra.
"When I was a girl," she said, "the lives of queens were considered rather dangerous reading for young women. You need not go into details, please."
I couldn't stand it any more myself. "If you'll just tell Hermione I called," I said, edging toward the door. Fothergil, however, stuck it out. In the ​frenzy of embarrassment he must have lost his head completely. For as I left I heard him beginning:
"Did you read the story in the papers today of the man who killed his wife? Crimes of passion are becoming more and more frequent…."