!
That"--Annie glanced at the retiring maid--"that's what makes me nervous
about Leslie," she confessed. "I'm afraid we hurried the child into it
just a little bit. It was an understood thing since they were nothing
but kiddies."

"Leslie is outrageously spoiled," Norma said, not unkindly.

"Leslie? Oh, horribly. Mama always spoils everyone and poor Theodore
spoiled her, too," Annie conceded.

"She told me herself yesterday," Norma went on, with a trace of her old
animation, "that they've overdrawn again. Now, Aunt Annie, I do think
that's outrageous! Chris straightened them all out last--when was
it?--June, after the baby came, and they have an enormous
income--thousands every month, and yet they are deep in again!"

"The wretched thing is that they quarrel about that!" Annie agreed.

"Well, exactly! That was what it was about day before yesterday, and
Leslie told me she cried all night. And you know the other day she took
Patricia and came home to Aunt Marianna, and it was terrible!"

"How much do you suppose the servants know of that?" Annie asked,
frowning.

"Oh, they _must_ know!" Norma replied.

"Foolish, foolish child! You know, Norma," Annie resumed, "Leslie comes
by her temper naturally. She is half French; her mother was a
Frenchwoman--Louison Courtot."

"It's a pretty name," Norma commented. "Did you know her?"

"Know her? She was my maid when I was about seventeen, a very superior
girl. I used to practise my French with her. She was extremely pretty.
After my father died my mother and I went to Florida, and when we came
back the whole thing broke. I thought it would kill Mama! At first we
thought Theodore had simply gotten her into 'trouble,' to use the dear
old phrase. But _pas du tout_; she had 'ze _mar-ri-age_ certificate' all
safe and sound. But he was no more in love with her than I was--a boy
nineteen! Mama made her leave the house, and cut off Theodore's
allowance entirely, and for a while they were together--but it couldn't
last. Teddy got his divorce when he went with Mama to California, but he
was ill then, though we didn't know it, poor boy! He lived five years
after that."

"But he saw Leslie?"

"Oh, dear, yes!" Annie said, buffing her twinkling finger-nails, idly.
"Didn't Mama ever tell you about that?"

"No, she never mentions it."

"Well, that was awful, too--for poor Mama. About four years after the
divorce, one night when we were all at home--it was just after Mama and
I c