Fifteen hundred dollars! He mused on his aunt's charity.
"And another," murmured Miss Eulalie, "another friend of ours made altogether ten thousand dollars in chicken pies."
"Ah," exclaimed the lodger, "that's even easier to believe. And does my uncle Carew make pies or dolls?"
"He is a pillar of the Church," said his hostess gravely, "a very distinguished gentleman, Mr. Antony. He bowed once to one of us in the street. Which of us was it, sister?"
Not Miss Mitty, at any rate, and she was inclined to think that Mr. Carew had made a mistake, whichever way it had been!
Their lodger listened with more interest when they spoke of the children. The little creatures went to school near the Whitcomb house. Gardiner was always ailing. Miss Mitty used to watch them from her window.
"Bella runs like a deer down the block, you never saw such nimble legs, and her skirts are so short! They should come down, Mr. Antony, and her hair is quite like a wild savage's."
Miss Eulalie had called Bella in once to mend a hole in her stocking "really too bad for school."
"She should have gone into the Women's Exchange," suggested her cousin, "and employed some one who was out of orders for chicken pies or dolls!"