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They were in many respects so right; she clung to that, and shirked more and more the paradoxical conviction that they were also somehow, and even in direct relation to that rightness, absurd. Very central in Miss Miniver's universe were the Goopes. The Goopes were the oddest little couple conceivable, following a fruitarian career upon an upper floor in Theobald's Road.
"I don't see why the responsibility of beauty should all be shifted on to the women," said Ann Veronica, suddenly remembering a part of Miss Miniver's discourse. "It rests with them by the nature of things. Why should you who are queens come down from your thrones? If you can afford it, WE can't.
Hetty, who had periods of lucid expression, put the thing for her from her pillow. She charged boldly into the space of Miss Miniver's rhetorical pause. "It isn't quite that we're toys. Nobody toys with me. Nobody regards Constance or Vee as a delicate trifle."
She did not understand the note of hostility to men that ran through it all, the bitter vindictiveness that lit Miss Miniver's cheeks and eyes, the sense of some at last insupportable wrong slowly accumulated. She had no inkling of that insupportable wrong. "We are the species," said Miss Miniver, "men are only incidents. They give themselves airs, but so it is.
The very facts that Miss Miniver never stated an argument clearly, that she was never embarrassed by a sense of self-contradiction, and had little more respect for consistency of statement than a washerwoman has for wisps of vapor, which made Ann Veronica critical and hostile at their first encounter in Morningside Park, became at last with constant association the secret of Miss Miniver's growing influence.
She thought of her aunt and that purse that was dropped on the table, and of many troublesome and ill-requited kindnesses; she thought of the help of the Widgetts, of Teddy's admiration; she thought, with a new-born charity, of her father, of Manning's conscientious unselfishness, of Miss Miniver's devotion. "And for me it has been Pride and Pride and Pride! "I am the prodigal daughter.
"I suppose," said Constance, stencilling away at bright pink petals, "it's our lot. But it's very beastly." "What's our lot?" asked her sister. "Slavery! Downtroddenness! When I think of it I feel all over boot marks men's boots. We hide it bravely, but so it is. Damn! I've splashed." Miss Miniver's manner became impressive.
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