“You live here?”
“Yes.”
“Your husband, too?”
“Mr. Hamilton is dead.”
“Um-hum, poor thing! So I s’pose your brother gives you a home?”
Mrs. Hamilton could be haughty enough when she chose, but she perceived that the spinster was too simple to mean anything sarcastic.
So she replied, with perfect good humor:
“I am not poor, Miss Ruttencutter, but I stay with my brother because we are both lonely, and it is pleasant to be together. It is convenient also to have me here to chaperone Eva.”
“Um-hum! Same as I chappyrone Patty,” returned the spinster, with an approving nod that made all her green feathers dance wildly.
Then she added, with another nod toward Eva: