“Good afternoon, Miss Breezy.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd. I’m your aunt and there’s no getting away from it. This playing of parts makes me impatient.” Her tone was snappy but there was, oddly enough, nothing antagonistic in her expression. On the contrary—and this put Lola immediately on her guard—there was all about her a new air of armistice, an obvious desire to call off unfriendly relations and bury the hatchet.
The thought that ran through Lola’s head was, “What does she want to know?”
With a touch of the adventurous spirit for which Lola had not given her credit, the good lady, who had recently somewhat increased in bulk, clambered into Feo’s extraordinary chair, in which she looked exactly as if she were waiting to have a tooth filled. Her thinning hair, streaked with white, was scrupulously drawn away from her forehead. Her black shiny dress was self-consciously plain and prim, and she wore those very ugly elastic-sided boots with patent leather tips that are always somehow associated with Philistinism. She might have been the Chairwoman of a Committee of Motion Picture Censorship. “I spent Thursday evening with your mother and father,” she said. “I’m glad to hear business is improving. Young Treadwell was there,—a precocious sort of person, I thought.”
“A poet,” said Lola.
“Poet, eh? Yes, I thought he was something of that sort. If I were his mother I’d spank the poetry out of him. What do we want poets for? Might as well have fiddlers to imitate whatever the man’s name was who played frivolous tunes when some place or other was burning. Men should work these days, not write sloppy things about gravestones.”
“He’ll make his mark,” said Lola.
“You should say a scratch,” corrected Miss Breezy. “However, that isn’t the point. It appears that Simpkins has become a friend of the family.”
Ah, so that was it. She had heard the gossip about Simpky and it was curiosity, not kindness, which had brought her into the dressing room.
“Simpkins,” said Miss Breezy, “is a warm member. His father left him some money and he has saved. For Ellen, for Elizabeth or even for Annie, whose father is a Baptist minister, he would make a very desirable husband. I have nothing to say against him—for them,” and she looked Lola fully and firmly in the eyes.