“Just because they're more delicate, just because you must look harder to discover them, just because you must get as much from a pot of hyacinths on the Avenue as from a whole field of primroses in the backwoods, you know,” she concluded, and the little circle nodded sagely and congratulated themselves on an unpublished paragraph.
“I don't agree with you, Mrs. Ranger,” said Aunt Ju-ju flatly, to the absolute amazement of her nieces and the tolerant amusement of the assembly. “I guess you haven't lived in the country much, or you wouldn't talk so. And primroses don't grow in fields here, anyway. If you could see my hyacinths and crocuses in round beds at home, you wouldn't mention those poor little stalks in the pots.”
Mrs. Ranger laughed, and directed her searching, level glance at the older woman, who combined in her comely, undisguised middle age something at once more matronly and more childish than the analytic authoress could ever find in her own mirror.
“Aha!” she cried, “then you are no friend of dear old Horace, after all, Miss Trueman! He and I, you see—”
The relation of these two urbanites was revealed no further, for a bustle in the little hall drew attention to a newcomer unknown not only to the guests but evidently to the hostesses, who rose, smiling uncertainly, as a portly, broad-shouldered man with iron-gray hair made his way through the group about the samovar.
“I'll have to introduce myself, I see,” he began, not precisely with what an exigent society calls ease of manner, but with a certain practical self-possession quite as effective.
“I didn't expect the girls to remember me, but I thought perhaps you might, Julia.”
Miss Trueman peered out from the shaded five-o'clock gloom so dear to Carolyn's soul.
“I don't seem—it's not—why, Cousin Lorando Bean, it's not you?”
“That's it,” he said heartily, “that's just exactly it. And he's mighty glad to see some of his relations again, I can tell you. And these are Carrie and Lizzie, I suppose. Well, well, fifteen years is a long time, even to an old fellow like me, and you girls were just beginning to be young ladies when I left Connecticut. How are you all?”