"Why do you think that Mabel is not dead?"
"Good God!" I replied. "Here she is. Don't you see her? What do these people mean?"
The old woman grinned and waved her feather fan at me, playfully, saying:
"Ask her if she isn't dead?"
I turned to Mabel in wonderment, but she only shook her head sadly.
"Why, of course she's dead!" said the old woman. "Don't you know that all of us here are dead?"
"Indeed, yes; we are all dead," cried the other guests in general chorus.
"This is getting beyond patience!" I exclaimed. "You, too, are pleased to joke with me, but I tell you frankly that I fail to see the fun of it. Perhaps, since you possess such a fund of humor, you will be telling me next that I am dead, also."
Then came that laugh again. I never shall forget it. Beginning with a cackling titter, it spread until the whole table was in a roar, making my very flesh creep. Then all at once it ceased, and again there was dead silence.
"Certainly you are dead," said the old lady with the camellias. "She's dead, and all of us are dead. She died this morning of acute congestion of the lungs, but I have been dead for these twenty years, and he, too," indicating with her fan the elderly gentleman with the pink nose. "My own complaint was cerebrospinal meningitis."