"Yes," assented Jane. She could not reproach Mrs. Bates for thus indulging her sense of humor in order to recoup herself for the tax on her memory.
"And when she goes down-stairs, it's like this." She gathered up her gown and sidled down affectedly over the remaining steps.
"That's it," said Jane, joining her in the hall below.
Mrs. Bates opened the front door herself. "You can take the choo-choo cars at Sixteenth, you know, and get off at Van Buren. Oh, dear; excuse my baby-talk; our little Reginald—two months old, you know. I'll have Lottie home for that lunch of ours."
"Don't apologize," said Jane. "I often use the same expression myself."
"Why, is there a baby at your house!"
"Well," said Jane, rather lamely, "Alice has got a little girl three years old."
"So David Marshall is a grandfather? But what is there extraordinary in that?—I'm one myself." She stood in the big porch looking down the street—at nothing." Well, now I am going to," she said, half to herself. "That settles it!"
She accompanied Jane half-way down the steps, bareheaded as she was, and in her morning-gown. A society reporter who happened to be passing originated the rumor that she had gone insane.
"Good-luck, my child. Use my name everywhere. Take all that anybody offers. Good-by! Good-by!"