"There is something in what you say, old girl," I was bound to assent.
"If you think so, dear, I am quite satisfied," Letitia responded readily. "But there is one thing about Mrs. Potzenheimer—by-the-by, she suggests that we call her Nellie—that troubles me. She says she never wants to go out."
"And that troubles you!" I exclaimed, astonished. "I should think you would be rejoiced. We shall feel so much safer in the knowledge that Mrs. Potzen—Nellie—is always in the kitchen."
"But it is so sad, Archie," persisted Letitia. "When I asked her what night she would like to go out, she burst out crying. She said she had nowhere to go—that she was old, and that nobody cared for her. She wept for ten minutes, and I think—I'm not sure, Archie—that I joined her. Poor old soul! My first impulse was to ask her to come in and sit with us—"
"Letitia!"
"I said 'my first impulse,'" she went on firmly. "I never act on first impulses, and I did not do so this time. Just the same, I felt sorry for cook. Perhaps she will get chummy with the servants in other apartments. She seems so respectable and dresses neatly in black. A more striking contrast to Anna Carter could scarcely be imagined. She is extremely quiet, and sits down a good deal. Each time I have seen her she has been 'resting her bones' as she calls it. Isn't it pitiful, Archie, to think of such a woman being forced to earn her living, instead of passing her days in a little cottage with honeysuckle all over it—"
"But there are none in New York, dear."
"You needn't be so disgustingly literal, Archie," Letitia protested with a pout. "I say that it is a pity she can't pass her days in a little cottage with honeysuckle all over it, and with her grandchildren grouped around her knee."
"Is she so fearfully old?" I asked in alarm.
"One needn't be disgracefully antique to have grandchildren," my wife declared. "You are so old-fashioned, dear. You revel in pictures of white-haired, toothless, old creatures when you hear of grandmothers. If my grandmother were alive to-day she would be just fifty-three. She married at sixteen."