"His train of cars and the little red wagon. And Grandma! I gave Mr. De Jarnette that picture of Margaret and Philip together—the one, you know, that we call 'the Madonna.' That is the sweetest thing she ever had taken, with Philip's baby face pressed up against hers. I told him it might help Philip at night to have it to look at if he was homesick."
"Bess!"
"Yes'm, I did! I knew it would make him howl. I hope it will! Any way, I thought the picture would do Mr. De Jarnette good."
"Bess," said Mrs. Pennybacker, in a burst of grandmotherly admiration which she did not always display so openly, "for a young girl you certainly have a great deal of sense. I hope Philip won't be too brave. I'd like to see Mr. Richard De Jarnette with a homesick child on his hands. And if he doesn't have one to-night I'll miss my guess. Bess! There's Maria—and that idiotic little poodle!... Oh, dear! I did hope I should be spared that to-day."
Looking from the window Bess saw Mrs. Van Dorn alighting from her carriage, the footman holding what looked like a jet-black silky ball with dashes of pink about it. He deposited it carefully in his mistress's waiting arms.
"That's Toddlekyns!" announced Mrs. Pennybacker. "I asked Maria the other day why she didn't give the thing a decent Christian dog's name. 'Toddlekyns' sounds to me like a weak attenuated cat."
Toddlekyns was in reality a very rare variety of Russian poodle, upon which Mrs. Van Dorn was just now lavishing the wealth of her unattached affections. Mrs. Pennybacker had found him on her return to the capital occupying so large a space in the center of the Van Dorn stage that her sense of proportion had been greatly outraged. She never passed him without wishing to administer a surreptitious kick that would send him into the wings.
The years had dealt kindly with Mrs. Van Dorn. Or perhaps it was that her emotions had been of that flabby kind that do not leave their impress on the face. She gave herself careful grooming. Once when she discovered an incipient line about the corner of her eye she straightened it out with court plaster over night, not sleeping much in consequence, and massaged it for two hours the next morning, excusing herself from attending divine service by saying firmly, "A woman's first duty is to herself. I simply will not have wrinkles."
"I thought I must come right over and hear all about it," she exclaimed, sinking gracefully into an arm-chair and lifting Toddlekyns to her lap. "So the case went against her. I heard something about it from Mrs. Somerville. And she will really have to give him up! Too bad! Can I see her? I suppose she feels dreadfully just at first.... At the hospital? You don't say so.... Brain fever? Why, they always die of that, don't they?... Well, I feel very sorry for her, though I must say I sympathize with Richard too."
"On what account?" demanded Mrs. Pennybacker.