They came down rather later to breakfast, and they seemed not to go
to school; some of them had piano lessons in their rooms. Their
mothers did not go out much; sometimes they went to church or the
theatre, and they went shopping. But they had apparently no more
social than domestic life. Now and then they had a friend to lunch
or dinner; if a lady was absent, it was known to Mrs. Harmon, and
through her to the other ladies, that she was spending the day with
a friend of hers at an hotel in Newton, or Lexington, or Woburn. In
a city full of receptions, of dinner-giving, and party-going, Mrs.
Harmon's guests led the lives of cloistered nuns, so far as such
pleasures were concerned; occasionally a transient had rooms for a
week or two, and was continually going, and receiving visits. She
became the object of a certain unenvious curiosity with the other
ladies, who had not much sociability among themselves; they waited a
good while before paying visits at one another's rooms, and then
were very punctilious not to go again until their calls had been
returned. They were all doctoring themselves; they did not talk
gossip or scandal much; they talked of their diseases and
physicians, and their married daughters and of Mrs. Harmon, whom
they censured for being too easygoing. Certain of them devoured
novels, which they carried about clasped to their breasts with their
fingers in them at the place where they were reading; they did not
often speak of them, and apparently took them as people take opium.
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