“It’s a pity it isn’t Emmie who’s lost her teeth, and not you,” said Tish. “Since she doesn’t need them and you do.”
But he looked pained at that; so she told him she would think things over and let him know what Aggie would do, and he went away. On his way out Tish asked him suddenly what sort of a dog they had, and he seemed surprised.
“It’s a Pekingese,” he said, and went out with his shoulders bent, like an old man.
After he had gone Aggie told us more about Emmie. She said it was a great pity about her, not forty yet and on her deathbed, but that that sort of weakness ran in the family.
“Her mother was delicate, too,” she said. “For twenty-five years she never came downstairs. Her mother carried up every bite of food she ate.”
“What happened to her then?” Tish put in, rousing herself. “Did she die?”
“No, but her mother did,” Aggie said.
“And then who carried the tray?”
“Well, she began to get better about that time, and she lived to be eighty. She would be living now, poor soul, but she got on a chair one night to reach a piece of pie that somebody had hidden in the pantry, and she fell off and broke her neck.”
Tish seemed very thoughtful as she went back to her apartment. She told Aggie not to do anything about the note for a time; that she would go and think over the situation. It was that night that she called me up and asked me how large a Pekingese dog was, and I told her the one her niece, Lily May Carter, had, weighed about seven pounds.