ith a face of dark despair and an intelligence closed to any mere
indigenous appeal. I was to learn later in the day that she's a
Macedonian Christian whom the Chataways harbor against the cruel Turk in
return for domestic service; a romantic item that Eliza named to me in
rueful correction of the absence of several indeed that are apparently
prosaic enough.

The powder on the massive lady's face indeed transcended, I rather
thought, the bounds of prose, did much to refer her to the realm of
fantasy, some fairy-land forlorn; an effect the more marked as the
wrapper she appeared hastily to have caught up, and which was somehow
both voluminous and tense (flowing like a cataract in some places, yet
in others exposing, or at least denning, the ample bed of the stream)
reminded me of the big cloth spread in a room when any mess is to
be made. She apologized when I said I had come to inquire for Miss
Talbert--mentioned (with play of a wonderfully fine fat hand) that she
herself was "just being manicured in the parlor"; but was evidently
surprised at my asking about Eliza, which plunged her into the
question--it suffused her extravagant blondness with a troubled light,
struggling there like a sunrise over snow--of whether she had better,
confessing to ignorance, relieve her curiosity or, pretending to
knowledge, baffle mine. But mine of course carried the day, for mine
showed it could wait, while hers couldn't; the final superiority of
women to men being in fact, I think, that we are more PATIENTLY curious.

"Why, is she in the city?"

"If she isn't, dear madam," I replied, "she ought to be. She left
Eastridge last evening for parts unknown, and should have got here by
midnight." Oh, how glad I was to let them both in as far as I possibly
could! And clearly now I had let Mrs. Chataway, if such she was, in very
far indeed.

She stared, but then airily considered. "Oh, well--I guess she's
somewheres."

"I guess she is!" I replied.

"She hasn't got here yet--she has so many friends in the city. But she
always wants US, and when she does come--!" With which my friend, now
so far relieved and agreeably smiling, rubbed together conspicuously the
pair of plump subjects of her "cure."

"You feel then," I inquired, "that she will come?"

"Oh, I guess she'll be round this afternoon. We wouldn't forgive her--!"

"Ah, I'm afraid we MUST forgive her!" I was careful to declare. "But
I'll come back on the chance."

"Any message