“Why, there’s your husband now!”
He stopped and turned back. “Oh, Mrs. Burrell, how do you do?” he said, abruptly. He extended his hand, and the old lady grasped it with enthusiasm.
“I’ve been all over your house,” she said.
“It’s simply the loveliest place I’ve ever seen. I’ve just been telling your wife,” she went on, “that I don’t see how Paradise can be any better than this.”
Briggs smiled. Then he turned to his wife and kissed her on the cheek.
“Well, it does me good to see you do that!” Mrs. Burrell declared. “It’s the only real home-like thing I’ve seen since I come to Washington.” She took a long breath. “I was saying to Mr. Burrell yesterday that if we didn’t know you and Mrs. Briggs we’d think there was no such thing as home life in Washington.”
“Oh, there’s a lot of it,” Briggs asserted, jocularly. “Only they keep it dark.”
“It seems to me there’s nothing but wire-pulling, wire-pulling, everybody trying to get ahead of everybody else. It makes me sick. Still, I suppose I’m doing a little of that myself just now,” she went on, with a nervous laugh. “What do you suppose I come here for to-day, Mr. Briggs? I ought to be ashamed bothering your wife just when she’s going to have a big party. But I knew it would just break my girls’ hearts if they didn’t come to-night. So I’ve asked if I couldn’t bring ’em.”
“Quite right, quite right,” said Briggs, cheerfully, but with the absent look still in his eyes.
Mrs. Burrell was a large woman with hair that had turned to a color approximating drab and giving a suggestion of thinness belied by the mass at the back. She had a sharp nose and gray eyes, none the less keen because they were faded with years and from wearing glasses. Her skin, which seemed to have been tightly drawn across her face, bagged heavily under the eyes and dropped at the corners of the disappointed and complaining mouth. Douglas Briggs suspected that at the time of her marriage she had been a typical New England old maid. If she had been more correct in her speech he would have marked her for a former school-teacher. As she talked it amused him to note the flashes of brightness in her eyes behind the black-rimmed glasses from which was suspended a gold chain, a touch of elegance which harmonized perfectly with the whole eccentric figure. Briggs felt sorry for her and he felt glad for her: she was enjoying Washington without realizing how much passing enjoyment she gave to the people she met.