Lizzie’s illness disposed of, the conversation turned—no, jumped, leaped, sprang—into that world of plays and concerts in which they had their beings. Mrs. Stregazzi, though still having trouble with her “wind,” launched forth into a description of the concert tour she and Berwick were to take through New England. Berwick had made a hit at Lizzie’s concert and he’d “got his chance at last.”
I sat aside and marveled at her. She must have been forty years old and she looked as weather-beaten as if, for twenty of the forty years, she had been the figurehead of a ship. But vigor and enthusiasm breathed from her. With the Robinson Crusoe hat slipped to one side of her head and the new corsets emitting protesting creaks as she swayed toward me, she gasped out the route, the terms, the programs, then dabbing at the little girl with her muff, exclaimed:
“And the kids are going to stay with mommer in the Bronx. Mrs. Drake, I’ve got the cutest little flat at One Hundred and Sixty-ninth Street. Wish you’d go up there some day and you’ll see the best pair of children and the grandest old lady in Manhattan.”
Berwick growled an assent and Miss Stregazzi, with her air of polite patience, filled in while her mother caught her breath.
“Grandma’s seventy-two. She used to sing in the opera chorus, but she’s got too old.”
Mrs. Stregazzi nodded confirmation, her eyes full of pride.
“That’s the way she pulled me along and got my education. Didn’t let go of the rudder till I could take hold. Now I do it. It’s been a struggle, took me into vaudeville, where I met Stregazzi and had my troubles, but they’re over now. I’m back where I belong and mommer can rest, blessed old soul. I keep them pretty snug, don’t I, Dan?”
Berwick gave a second growl and then the conversation swung back to the inevitable topic. I felt as if I were on a scenic railway on a large scale, being rushed perilously along with wild drivings through space, varied by breathless stoppages in strange towns. I never heard so much geography since my school-days or so much scandal since I came to the age when I could listen to my elders. Names I knew well and names I’d never heard jostled one another in those flying sentences, and the quarrels! and the divorces! AND the love-affairs! I looked uneasily at the little girl and caught her in the act of yawning. In proof of her grandmother’s good training she concealed her mouth with a very small hand in a very dirty white glove. Her mother ended a graphic account of the trials of a tertium quid on the road:
“And he pulled a kodak from under his coat and snapped them just in the middle of the kiss. That divorce wasn’t contested.”
The little girl, having accomplished her yawn, dropped her hand and said without interest, but as one who feels good manners demand some sort of comment: