ing to sympathize with Mrs. Hilary. She was a
sweet-faced, tired-looking little woman with a vague smile and dreamy
eyes. About five years ago Mrs. Howard had had "reverses" and had been
forced by necessity to live to violate the sanctity of her hearth and
home; grossly speaking, she had been obliged to take boarders, no
feasible alternative seeming to suggest itself. The old house in
Eleventh Street, in which she had embarked upon this cheerless career,
had never been a home for her or her daughter. Yet an irrepressible
sociability of nature enabled her to find a certain pleasure in the life
impossible to her more reserved daughter.

As they all sat around now in the parlor, into which the smell of the
Sunday turkey had somehow penetrated, a few more guests wandered in and
sat about provisionally on the impracticable parlor furniture, waiting
for the dinner signal. Mrs. Howard bravely tried to keep up the
simulation of social interchange with which she ever pathetically
strove to elevate the boarding-house intercourse into the decency of a
chosen association.

Suddenly there came a thump and a crash against the door and the twins
burst in, their jackets unbuttoned, their dusty picture hats awry.

"Oh! mater, mater!" they cried tumultuously, dancing about her.

"Such sport, mater. We fed the elephant."

"And the rabbits--"

"And a monkey carried off Gwendolen's gloves--"

"Children," exclaimed Mrs. Hilary impotently, looking from one to the
other, "where _have_ you been?" (She pronounced it bean.)

"To the park, mater--"

"To see the animals--"

"Oh, mater, you should see the ducky little baby lion!"

"What is it that they call you?" inquired a perpetually smiling young
kindergartner who had just taken possession of a top-floor hall-room.

Mrs. Hilary glanced at her slightingly.

"What is it that they _call_ me? Why, mater, of course."

"Ah, yes," the girl acquiesced pleasantly. "I remember now; it's
English, of course."

"Oh, no," returned Mrs. Hilary instructively, "it's not English; it's
Latin."

The kindergartner was silent. Mrs. Pendleton suppressed a chuckle that
strongly suggested her "mammy." Mr. Barlow grinned and Elsie Howard's
mouth twitched.

"They are such picturesque children," Mrs. Howard put in hastily. "I
wonder you don't paint them oftener."

"I declare I just wish I could paint," Mrs. Pendleton contributed
sweetly, "I think it's such pretty work."

Mrs. Hilary was engrossed in