"Was your sister there, Eve? I didn't see her. Where do they live?"
"No. She isn't well. They're like the rest of us. They don't live any place." She spoke reluctantly, and then, as if she felt that something more was expected of her, she added: "They have been abroad awhile. In Paris, mostly."
But Martha took up Bob's challenge. "He's so distinguished," she drawled. "Doesn't he dance divinely, Eve?"
"I don't know," Eve replied, shortly. "I don't dance with him." And then she added, abruptly, "Look here, Martha, you needn't dance with him to please me!"
"Don't worry about that. I dance with him to please myself. You ought to hear him talk, mother. He's got the loveliest foreign accent, hasn't he?"
"Hasn't he! And he was brought up in Indiana!" Eve murmured.
"He's been everywhere. I'm going abroad myself next summer. He knew Tchekhoff. He was telling me about him."
Eve sat up. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. "That's a new one to me," she commented. "I don't believe it." The silence became awkward. She broke it abruptly. "He's a four-flusher, Martha. Take it from me. From the ground up. If he ever saw a Russian in Paris, he'd have known Tolstoy himself, and been bosom friend with Dostoieffsky. He's a journalist, to put it mildly."
It was painful, this way Eve had of saying nasty things about her relations, as if it were a noble duty. She had spoken so doggedly that her face was flushed an unbecoming dark red. Martha grew pinker. The silence grew longer. Emily said, carelessly, rising:
"What pests these in-laws are! Let's go to bed. You've ripped your hem, Martha. Did you know it? You're both to sleep till noon."