Miriam came bustling in, with a grim, set face. She scowled as she saw us, and placed her arms akimbo, in the style made popular by fishwives, and Madame Angot.
"I've packed off me sister, Mrs. O'Flaherty, and me daughters in a hurry," she said savagely. "Yer doctor says it's catching, and it's just me luck that Muriel, and Rosalind, and Winnifred should have been here. Worse luck to it, say I! Me poor Letitia, a-prattling so cutely as she's laid low by the nasty disease."
"It is not at all serious," murmured Letitia sympathetically.
"For them as ain't got it—no, it ain't serious," said Birdie Miriam McCaffrey mockingly. "For them as ain't got it—it just tickles, that's all. Curse me for a-comin' here. That's my motto. 'The neighborhood's just alive with it,' says yer doctor. 'It's in the air. It's epileptic. Why,' says he, 'there's hardly a house where they ain't got mumps.' Nice for me, eh? If them's yer Christian principles, luring a hard-working woman, with a child, into a mumpy house, and a-saying no word to put her on her guard—"
"You can go whenever you are ready," I said loftily, "and no impertinence, please."
"As soon as my Letitia can be moved—if the poor thing ever lives through it—and I have me doubts, as she's that delicate—we'll go. Oh, we'll go, right enough. Don't you worry about that. Not if yez poured gold at me feet, and if I wuz a-perishing for want of a bit o' food, to keep body and soul together, would I stay in a house that's alive with germs. 'Yes,' says yer doctor, 'it's a germ. It's a mikey in the air.' Me poor Mike! 'A mikey in the air,' says he. And I only hope that me Muriel, and Rosalind, and Winnifred will be spared, as it's so catching. Why didn't ye tell me, Mrs. Fairfax? Why didn't ye say, when ye come down to Sixth Avenue, that there was diseases all around? Play fair; that's my motto. I don't believe in no underhand game, I don't. Not for me!"
As she flounced out of the room, Letitia sank into a chair and burst into tears. The twittering of Birdie had been horribly effective. It had made me feel nervous and unstrung. Logic was quite unavailing, and for the first time in my life, I realized that those with a sense of humor might have fared better than we did.