SOME REMARKS ABOUT CATS.
The Nicaragua, April 27.
I've been sitting for my portrait to Van Nostrand. It is an offering to the shades of Prof. Darmstetter. I must preserve some attempted record of my beauty for his sake; though the Bacillus couldn't have made, if he had lived, another woman as beautiful as I. It isn't conceivable.
I believe I'm a little tired with that, and with rearranging Mrs. Whitney's flat, and a little worried, too, about bills, the money from Father comes so slowly. Not that I need mind owing a trifle at the shops; half the women run accounts; but it's embarrassing not to have ready money. Why, I have to buy things to ward off gifts; Meg simply won't see me go without.
Perhaps I'm depressed too, because to-day has been a succession of petty squabbles, and I hate squabbling.
This morning came Aunt Frank. I knew she had returned from Bermuda, so I wasn't surprised to see her dumpy figure appear in Mrs. Whitney's parlour, followed by Uncle Timothy's broad back and towering head. I did with zest the honours of the apartment. It was sweet revenge to see Mrs. Baker's nervous discomfort at meeting me, and to watch her stealing furtive glances at my beautiful home.
"Well, Nelly, dear," she said, "you look very cosey, but we expected that, after your visit to Mrs. Van Dam, you would go to Marcia until our return."
"Oh, I couldn't think of troubling either of you," I said sweetly; "I have friends to whom it is a real pleasure to advise me."
That shot told.
"You don't know what anxiety you've caused, leaving us for—for strangers, that way," she retorted, bridling; "but since you would go, I'm glad everything's turned out so—been having your portrait painted? Why, it's a—it is a Van Nostrand!"—She had spied the painting.—"It's like you, rather; but—doesn't he charge a fortune?"