"Grab him, will you?" she gasped; and when Mr. Weston had grabbed, and the terrier was sprawling abjectly under the discipline of a friendly cuff on his nose, she got her breath, and said, panting, "Where do you spring from?"
It was Frederica Payton, her short serge skirt splashed with mud, and a lock of hair blown across her eyes. "He's a wretch, that pup!" she said. "I'll give him to you for a present."
"I wouldn't deprive you of him for the world!" he protested, in alarm. "Here, let me have the leash."
She relinquished it, and they walked back together toward Payton Street, Zip shambling meekly at their heels.
"Well," she said, thrusting a confiding arm in his, "were you able to move her? Or did she turn Aunt Bessie loose on you, too? I knew Aunt Bessie was to be asked to the funeral. I suppose she talked anti-suffrage, and quoted 'my William' every minute? Aunt Bessie hasn't had an idea of her own since the year one! Isn't it queer what stodgy minds middle-aged women have? I suppose you are about dead?"
"I have felt more lively. Fred, why can't you see your mother's side of it?"
"Why can't she see my side of it?"
"But she thinks—"
"But I think! What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own." As she spoke, the light of a street lamp fell full on her face—a wolfish, unhumorous young face, pathetic with its hunger for life; he saw that her chin was twitching, and there was a wet gleam on one flushed cheek. "Besides," she said, "I simply won't go on spending my days as well as my nights in that house. You don't know what it means to live in the same house with—with—"