You are presented to her as "Mr. Mmmm," and she is "delighted," and smiles so ravishingly that you wish you were twenty years younger. You do not yet know that she is a gusher. But her first remark labels her. Just to test her, for there is something in the animation of her face and the farawayness of the eye that makes you suspect her sincerity, you say:
"I happen to have six children—"
"Oh, how perfectly dee-ar! How old are they?"
She scans the gown of a woman who has just entered the room and, being quite sure that she is engaged in a mental valuation of it, you say:
"They're all of them six."
"Oh, how lovely!" Her unseeing eyes look you in the face. "Just the right age to be companions."
"Yes, all but one."
The eye has wandered to another gown, but the sympathetic voice says:
"Oh, what a pi-i-ty!"
"Yes, isn't it? But he's quite healthy."