"You have such a clutter of things, Ellen," she complained, sharply.
"It's lighter up-stairs," Mrs. Payton defended herself.
"What did you say? Do speak more distinctly!"
"I said it was lighter up-stairs. Come up, and I'll show you a puzzle I've just worked out. Dreadfully difficult!"
But Mrs. Holmes never went up-stairs in the Payton house; to be sure, the door between the sitting-room and the room beyond it was always locked, but—you heard things. So she said she couldn't climb the stairs. "I'm getting old, I'm afraid," she said, archly.
"I suppose you are very rheumatic?" her daughter sympathized; "why don't you try—"
"Not at all!" the older lady interrupted; "just a little stiff. Mrs. Dale said her cousin thought you were my sister," she added, maliciously.
As far as clothes went, the cousin might have supposed Mrs. Holmes was Mrs. Payton's daughter—the skirt in the latest ugliness of style, the high heels, the white veil over the elaborate hair, were all far more youthful than the care-worn mother of Frederica (and Mortimore) would have permitted herself.
"I've been so dreadfully busy," Mrs. Holmes declared; "I meant to come in yesterday, but I had a thousand things to do! Bridge all afternoon at Bessie Childs's. I played with young Mrs. Dale. She ought to get another dressmaker."