"I'm pretty ashamed of myself," said Dum.
"Me, too! Me, too!" from Dee and me.
"I don't know what made us stay and listen, it was so thrilling somehow. Aren't you sorry for Claire? And poor Louis! To think of having only one profession open to you and that to be preaching to six persons including your own family."
"Yes, and no doubt there is already an incumbent," I suggested. "I'd love to know Claire. Didn't she sound spunky and at the same time respectful. I hope she can bring the old fat gentleman around."
"She might bring him around, but she can't get around him, he's too fat," laughed Dee. "I tell you I'd like to know Louis. I fancy he must be interesting. Isn't their name romantic? Gaillard sounds like it ought to go with poignard: Louis Gaillard drew his poignard and defended himself from the cannaille."
"Isn't it funny that we should have peeped into the very garden belonging to the pretty rumpled girl in the bus? Now I s'pose we will run against the pale old dames in the crêpe veils."
I had hardly spoken before we did run against the very old ladies. They had darted out of a large shabby old house about a block from the Gaillard's home and were in the act of purchasing "Rah, rah, rah, Shrimpy! Shrimpy! Rah, rah, rah!"
Their veils were off now but they still had an air of being shrouded in crêpe, although their dresses were made of black calico. It seemed to take two of them to buy a dime's worth of shrimps, and the shrimp vender stood patiently by while they picked over his wares.
"They are quite small, Sam," complained the taller of the two.
"Yes, Miss Laurens, but yer see dese hyar is shrimpys, dey ain't crabs, nor yit laubsters."