the task of putting the twins to rights.

"I don't know what to do with them, they are quite unmanageable," she
sighed. "It's so bad for them--bringing them up in a lodging-house."

Mrs. Howard flushed and Mrs. Pendleton's eyes flashed. The dinner bell
rang and Elsie Howard rose with a little laugh.

"An English mother with American children! What do you expect, Mrs.
Hilary?"

Mrs. Hilary was busy retying a withered blue ribbon upon the left side
of Gladys' brow. She looked up to explain:

"They are only half-American, you know. But their manners are getting
quite ruined with these terrible American children."

Then they filed down into the basement dining-room for the noon dinner.

"Horrid, rude little Cockney," Mrs. Pendleton whispered in Elsie
Howard's ear.

The girl smiled faintly. "Oh, she doesn't know she is rude. She is
just--English."

Mrs. Howard, over the characterless soup, wondered what it was about the
little English artist that seemed so "different." Conversation with Mrs.
Hilary developed such curious and unexpected difficulties. Mrs. Howard
looked compassionately over at the kindergartner who, with the
hopefulness of inexperience, started one subject after another with her
unresponsive neighbor. What quality was it in Mrs. Hilary that
invariably brought both discussion and pleasantry to a standstill?
Elsie, upon whom Mrs. Howard depended for clarification of her thought,
would only describe it as "English." In her attempts to account for this
alien presence in her household, Mrs. Howard inevitably took refuge in
the recollection of Mrs. Hilary's widowhood. This moving thought
occurring to her now caused her to glance in the direction of Mrs.
Pendleton's black dress and her face lightened. Mrs. Pendleton was of
another sort. Mrs. Pendleton had proved, as Mrs. Howard always expressed
it, "quite an acquisition to our circle." She felt almost an affection
for the merry, sociable talkative Southern woman, with her invariable
good spirits, her endless fund of appropriate platitude and her ready,
superficial sympathy. Mrs. Pendleton had "come" through a cousin of a
friend of a friend of Mrs. Howard's, and these vague links furnished
unlimited material for conversation between the two women. Mrs.
Pendleton was originally from Savannah, and the names which flowed in
profusion from her lips were of unimpeachable aristocracy. Pendleton was
a very "good name" in the South, Mrs. Howard had remarked to Elsi