at she liked it, and so gradually we got on to
different subjects, and I think she was entertained. She seemed
interested to hear about the nurses at the hospital and some of the
funny things that happen there, and I could see that she was trying to
keep her end up--oh, she was all right, Anne Elton was, and no mistake!
There was nothing morbid about her: she was trying to help all she
could.

When I came down for dinner there was a young man with them, a
handsome, dark fellow, and he talked a great deal with me--I could see
he was trying to size me up, and it was easy to see that he was pretty
far gone as far as Miss Elton was concerned, and didn't care who knew
it. We must have seemed a strange party to any one who didn't know the
ins and outs of the thing--only the five of us in that big dining-room
with the conservatory opening into it; the mother, one of those
stringy, grey New York women, that always wear diamond dog-collars,
worried to death and nervous as a witch; Mr. Elton--he was Commodore of
the New York Yacht Club at that time--fat and healthy and
reddish-purple in the face; young Mr. Ferrau (he was from an old French
family and looked it, though a born New Yorker) and me in my white
uniform and cap next to Miss Elton, all in white with a big rope of
pearls and pearls on her fingers. She could wear a lower cut gown and
look more decent in it than any woman I ever saw. All her evening
dresses were like that, perfectly plain, just draped around her, with
long trains and no trimmings: her skin was like cream-coloured marble,
not a mark or line or vein on it, but just one brown mole on the right
shoulder blade, and that, as her mother said, was really an addition.

Nobody talked much but Mr. Ferrau and the old gentleman--there's no
doubt he had been a gay old boy in his day!--for I never do talk when I
dine with the family, and the mother was too nervous for anything but
complaining of the food. The Lord knows why, for it beat any French
restaurant I ever ate in, or Delmonico's either, and Mr. Ferrau and I
got quite jolly over how they put soft-boiled eggs into those round,
_soufflee_ sort of things with tomato sauce over them, without spilling
the yolks. Then they asked if I'd play bridge a bit, and though I
don't care for games much, I learned to play pretty well with my
morphine-fiend and his mother, so of course I did, and the old
gentleman and I played the young couple, and Madam Elton crocheted,
si