"Well, Mrs. Steptoe?" Mrs. Eldridge speaks.
"Nothing, ma'am. Oh no!—only what unaccountably caught my eye. Nothing to detain. What would be termed an impression." She relinquished the album slowly with a vaguely constructed "Excusin' the liberty I took, I'm sure!"
"You noticed something, Mrs. Steptoe?"
"In the manner of speaking, yes! But not to detain. It just cut across me like ... yes, ma'am, thank you, just a minute!" For Mrs. Eldridge had said, "Look at it again," and handed the open book back.
Aunt Stingy looked and looked, in more and more visible bewilderment. Pressed to explain it, she at last said: "I can't make no less of it, put it how you may. That's Mr. and Mrs. Hallock I was telling of, just now half-an-hour gone. And that is the young lady."
Iterations, stimulated by an incredulity Mrs. Eldridge affects in order to procure them, are interrupted by a knock at the front door. Mrs. Steptoe departs to open it. It is Mr. Eldridge, to accompany his wife home. He is not, she says, to hurry and fuss, but to sit down and wait, and not knock things over. He makes the remark, "Somethin' up! Easy does it!" implying, perhaps, readiness to wait for enlightenment, and becomes seated, but knocks nothing over. His wife throws him a gleam, to live on. "We are discussing the identity of a photograph," she says.
An occurrence interposes, Master Bob's arrival; the toleration for a few brief moments of exultation over the evening's successes, and his dismissal to bed, rather disgusted at Europe's want of appreciation. Then Mrs. Steptoe, who had retired to admit him, re-enters and resumes.
"Those are the parties I told you, ma'am," says she, in an undertone of confidence brought forward from the previous conversation, rather definitely exclusive of the newcomer, who had overlapped it. But he has his ideas, and as soon as he has thoroughly polished with his wrist the bridge of a nose he has just blown, he offers counsel:
"No name on 'em? Look on the back. Look on the edges where they tuck in. Nothin' like lookin'!" His wife accepts the suggestion without tribute to his sagacity; and when the photo is slipped from the passepartout, there on the back is plainly written: "Mr. and Mrs. Hallock, Nelly, Totty, and self. June, 1888."