“We-ell, not exactly,” she demurred.
“But that's the idea? I thought so. Yes. How old is Lizzie now? Thirty?”
“Oh, no, Cousin Lorando; L—— Elise isn't twenty-nine yet. Carolyn is about thirty.”
“I don't seem to recall any one chaperoning you and Hattie when you were thirty,” he suggested thoughtfully.
She laughed involuntarily.
“Oh, Hattie was married, Cousin Lorando, and the children were ten years old! And, anyway, it was different then.”
“The girls were just as pretty, I guess,” he insisted. “And there were plenty of buggies, if anybody had designs.”
There was a pause, and the buzz of voices from the other room rose loudly.
“They've neither of them got their mother's looks,” he observed; and then, with apparent irrelevance: “When will they be considered safe to go about alone?”
“I don't know exactly what you mean,” she began a little coldly, but his laugh reassured her.