I'm in a queer state of mind about Cyrus.
March 3. "Ma" Burke was brought down to the drawing-room for tea to-day. She held a regular levee. Those that came early spread it round, and by six o'clock they were pouring in. She looked extremely well, and gloriously happy. All she had needed was complete rest and sleep—and less to eat. "After this," she said, "I'm not going to eat more than four or five meals a day. At my age a woman can't stand the strain of ten and twelve—my record was sixteen—counting two teas as one meal." For an hour there was hilarious chattering in English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and mixtures of all five. I think the thing that most fascinates Mrs. Burke about Washington is the many languages spoken. She looks at me in an awed way when I trot out my three in quick succession. And she regards the women as superhuman who speak so many languages so fluently that they drift from one to the other without being quite sure what they're speaking. There certainly were enough going on at once to-day, and a good many of the women smoked.
But to return to Mrs. Burke. When only a few of those we know best were left this afternoon, and Nadeshda was smoking, Jessie, who is always so tactful, said to Robert: "I'm glad to see that you don't object to Nadeshda's smoking."
Mrs. Burke laughed. "Why should he?" said she. "Why, when we were children ma and pa used to sit on opposite sides of the chimney, smoking their pipes. And ma dipped, too, when it wasn't convenient for her to have her pipe."
"Do you smoke, Mrs. Burke?" asked Jessie, with wide, serious eyes. "I never saw you."
"No, I don't," she confessed. "Tom used to hate the smell of it, so I never got into the habit."
Nadeshda was tremendously amused by what Mrs. Burke had said about pipes. "I didn't know it was considered nice for a lady to smoke in America until recently," said she. "And pipes! How eccentric! Mama smokes cigars—one after dinner, but I never heard of a lady smoking a pipe."
"Ma wasn't a lady—what you'd call a lady," replied Mrs. Burke. "She was just a plain woman. She didn't smoke because she thought it was fashionable, but because she thought it was comfortable. As soon as we children got a little older we used to be terribly ashamed of it—but she kept right on. And now it's come in style."
"Not pipes," said Jessie.