"Stunning, stunning!" cried Fitzie, who had come back from the kitchenette. "A wonderful concert gown it would make."
"Do you think so?" said Nan and felt a warm glow suffuse her whole being, so that she could not help throwing back her head a little and straightening her shoulders.
"Too lovely for words," whined Miss Spence through the pins in her mouth, standing back against the wall to look.
"I seem to remember having heard Phillips Brooks say once," Aunt M. was saying, "that a meal without fellowship was almost an enormity. It's so true. As one grows older, Nancibel, one has to eat so many lonely, tasteless meals."
Nan looked at her aunt across the round primly set table, where the four candles under their silver shades cast an uncertain creamy light on the starched cloth and gave forks and spoons and plates blue uncertain shadows.
"But I find it rather pleasant to have a meal alone now and then ... It gives me a chance to collect my thoughts."
Aunt M. was lifting a cup of cocoa to her lips, carefully like a child; she smiled wryly and said with a glint from the candles in her eyes:
"Because you can have company whenever you want. Nobody wants very much to have supper with an old woman like me."
"Why, Aunt M., you know I love to talk to you this way. The only reason I don't come oftener is that I'm so busy nowadays." Nan's fingers on her lap were tapping nervously against her knee.
"Of course, of course, dear, I understand. With your music and everything. I used to be very busy, too, and even now I'm not idle, am I?"