Lottie and her two friends had one of those long animated talks. Lottie had lighted a fire in the sitting room fireplace. There were flowers in the room—jonquils, tulips. The old house was quiet, peaceful. Lottie made a charming hostess. They laughed a good deal from the very start when Winnie Steppler had come up the stairs panting apologies for her new head-gear.
"Don't say it's too youthful. I know it. I bought it on that fine day last week—the kind of spring day that makes you go into a shop and buy a hat that's too young for you." Her cheeks were rosy. When she laughed she opened her mouth wide and stuck her tongue out so that she reminded you of the talcum baby picture so familiar to everyone. A woman of tremendous energy—magnetic, witty, zestful.
"Fifty's the age!" she announced with gusto, as dinner progressed. "At fifty you haven't a figger any more than you have legs—except, of course, for purposes of locomotion. At fifty you can eat and drink what you like. Chocolate with whipped-cream at four in the afternoon. Who cares! A second helping of dessert. It's a grand time of life. At fifty you don't wait for the telephone to ring. Will he call me! Won't he call me! A telephone's just a telephone at fifty—a convenience without a thrill to it. Many's the time that bell has stabbed me. But not now. Nothing more can happen to you at fifty—if you've lived your life as you should. Here I sit, stays loosened, savouring life. I wouldn't change places with any young sprat I know."
Emma Barton smiled, calm-eyed. Winnie Steppler had been twice married, once widowed, once divorced. Emma Barton had never married. Yet both knew peace at fifty.
"Well," said Lottie, as they rose from the table, "perhaps, by the time I'm fifty—but just now I've such a frightened feeling as though everything were passing me by; all the things that matter. I want to grab at life and say, 'Heh, wait a minute! Aren't you forgetting me?'"
Winnie Steppler glanced at her sharply. "Look out, my girl, that it doesn't rush back at your call and drop the wrong trick into your lap."
A little flash of defiance came into Lottie's eyes. "The wrong trick's better than no trick at all."
Emma Barton looked at Lottie curiously, with much the same glance that she bestowed upon the girls who came before her each morning. "What do you need to keep you happy, Lottie?"
Lottie did not hesitate a moment. "Work that's congenial; books; music occasionally; a picnic in the woods; a five-mile hike, a well-fitting suit, a thirteen-dollar corset, Charley—I didn't mean to place her last. She should be up at the beginning somewhere."
"How about this superstition they call love?" inquired Winnie Steppler. Lottie shrugged her shoulders. Winnie persisted. "There must have been somebody, some time."