"The portraits are splendid, and there was a Wedgewood pitcher on the mantelpiece that I wouldn't trust Zebedee alone with if I were those ladies," exclaimed Dum.
"They had a lovely cat, too; so clean and soft, and he came to me in the friendliest way," from Dee.
"They gave us apricot cordial in Bohemian glass tumblers, and wafers you could see through," I put in.
"Well, all this sounds fine. How about the bedrooms? Were they attractive, too?"
"Bedrooms! We didn't see them."
"Oh, then you expect to sleep on the stone benches, perhaps."
"I wanted to ask to see them, but the ladies were so funny and stiff and seemed to want us to pretend to be guests, so that naturally we just pretended."
"I see. You came to terms with them, however, of course."
"Terms! You mean money terms? Why, Edwin, we could no more mention money in their presence than we could rope in a house where the father has been hanged."
Professor Green went off into a fit of laughter that made me think that after all maybe he was younger than Zebedee. He kissed his wife twice right before us and in plain view of the passersby on Meeting Street, but he couldn't help it. She was so adorably girlish in her reasons for engaging board from Charleston aristocrats without even seeing the bedrooms, and with absolutely no idea of what remuneration those unbending dames would expect.