I have seen Mrs. Mount.
Mumsie and I were going down Maple Avenue when I saw her. She wore a large, beautiful, black velvet hat, with ermine trimming, and came marching down the street majestically in her seal-skin jacket and ermine stole. Her hair is gold: I don’t mean coppery gold or any other kind of gold, but real, brassy, gold-yellow. I had an eye on her some time before Mumsie caught sight of her. I knew it was Mrs. Mount—instinct told.
I grasped Mumsie by the arm and whispered. “Yes, it is she,” she said.
From the way Mrs. Mount held her head it was evidently her intention of passing us with a mere bow. But to show how kind Mumsie is, she exclaimed: “Oh, Mrs. Mount, thank you so much for the lettuce, and things.”
It was very well done, just as if speaking to her had been an afterthought. We all stopped; Mumsie and she shook hands, and I’m sure I beamed.
Mrs. Mount gazed across the street for a moment ere she replied: “It was nothing, really, it was nothing; I’m always only too glad to help anything Mrs. Lien or you are arranging. What would the poor do without Mrs. Lien? I have my own troubles it is true,” she continued without pause in her drawling voice, “chasing around these horrid shops for corsets, corsets! Do you know, really, it is too awful for words. Those I can get here are quite impossible, and the others have not arrived from Paris.” Mrs. Mount accompanied her words by protruding her chin after the manner I had observed Mumsie affect.
“Too bad,” murmured Mumsie sympathetically.
“Do you know, really it is.” She spoke as if every other word were in capitals. “I always get mine from Paris,” and with a most pronounced sigh, “but they cost a hundred francs a pair, twenty dollars a pair!”
With the closing of this speech she turned and regarded me, and Mumsie introduced me.
“Nice looking little girl, a bud?” Mrs. Mount was pleased to say. “Well, my dear, you will have a good time, if you make friends with the right people; make it a rule, only the right people.”