"To-morrow," she said.
"And may we know..."
"I go alone," she answered, smiling.
About each of her ecstatic granddaughters' necks she gravely clasped her pearl or diamond chains, as they stood at the foot of the stairs in her brownstone house long after midnight; in each grandson's hot, astonished palm lay a glittering ring or bracelet, "For your wife, some day!"
"How strangely mamma is acting," Wilhelmina complained to her brother. "I suppose she is excited by all this?"
"She appears perfectly calm to me," he answered. "I have always told you, Mina, that you have a tendency to call any one excited who does anything that you don't expect."
Their mother sat in silence in her room while her maid, a faithful mulattress of many years' service, undressed her.
"Is that little tin box where I can get it?" she asked at last, when all was done.
"Yes, madam."
"Are the house-keys here?"