s
to say, that the high-backed arm-chair beside the fire, sheltered by a
screen from all possibility of draughts, has an occupant. Dress and
appearance show a doubly septuagenarian character: at the age of seventy,
which in this place she retains as the hall-mark of her earthly
pilgrimage, she belongs also to the 'seventies' of the last century, wears
watered silk, and retains under her cap a shortened and stiffer version of
the side-curls with which she and all 'the sex' captivated the hearts of
Charles Dickens and other novelists in their early youth. She has soft and
indeterminate features, and when she speaks her voice, a little shaken by
the quaver of age, is soft and indeterminate also. Gentle and lovable, you
will be surprised to discover that she, also, has a will of her own; but
for the present this does not show. From the dimly illumined corner behind
the lamp her voice comes soothingly to break the discussion_.)

OLD LADY. My dear, would you move the light a little nearer? I've dropped
a stitch.

LAURA (_starting up_). Why, Mother dear, when did you come in?

JULIA (_interposing with arresting hand_). Don't! You mustn't try to
touch her, or she goes.

LAURA. Goes?

JULIA. I can't explain. She is not quite herself. She doesn't always hear
what one says.

LAURA (_assertively_). She can hear me. (_To prove it, she raises
her voice defiantly._) Can't you, Mother?

MRS. R. (_the voice perhaps reminding her_). Jane, dear, I wonder
what's become of Laura, little Laura: she was always so naughty and
difficult to manage, so different from Martha--and the rest.

LAURA. Lor', Julia! Is it as bad as that? Mother, 'little Laura' is here,
sitting in front of you. Don't you know me?

MRS. R. Do you remember, Jane, one day when we'd all started for a walk,
Laura had forgotten to bring her gloves, and I sent her back for them? And
on the way she met little Dorothy Jones, and she took her gloves off her,
and came back with them just as if they were her own.

LAURA. What a good memory you have, Mother! I remember it too. She was an
odious little thing, that Dorothy--always so whiney-piney.

JULIA. More tea, Laura?

(_Laura pushes her cup at her without remark, for she has been kept
waiting; then, in loud tones, to suit the one whom she presumes to be
rather deaf_:)

LAURA. Mother! Where are you living now?

MRS. R. I'm living, my dear.

LAURA. I said 'where?'

JULIA. We live where it suits us, Laura.

LAU