e-decked veranda built of foundry work that was meant to look like
leaves and vines, I expect. Cute idea, eh? Bein' all painted brick red,
though, it ain't so convincing but stragglin' over ours is a wistaria
that has a few sickly-lookin' blossoms on it every spring and manages to
carry a sprinklin' of dusty leaves through the summer. Also there's a
nine-by-twelve lawn, that costs a dollar a square foot to keep in shape,
I'll bet.

From that description maybe you'd judge that the place where I hang out
is a little antique. It is. But inside it's mighty comf'table, and it's
the best imitation of a home I've ever carried a latch-key to. As for
the near-aunts, Zenobia and Martha, take it from me they're the real
things in that line, even if they did let me in off the street without
askin' who or what! The best of it is they never have asked, which
makes it convenient. I couldn't tell 'em much, if they did.

There's Martha--well, she's the pious one. It ain't any case of sudden
spasms with her. It's a settled habit. She's just as pious Monday
mornin' as she is Sunday afternoon, and it lasts her all through the
week. You know how she started in by readin' them Delilah and Jona yarns
to me. She's kept it up. About twice a week she corners me and pumps in
a slice of Scripture readin', until I guess we must be more 'n half
through the Book. Course there's a lot of it I don't see any percentage
in at all; but I've got so I don't mind it, and it seems to give Aunt
Martha a lot of satisfaction. She's a lumpy, heavy-set old girl, Martha,
and a little slow; but the only thing that ain't genuine about her is
the yellowish white frontispiece she pins on over her own hair when she
dolls up for dinner.

But Zenobia--say, she's a diff'rent party! A few years younger than
Martha, Zenobia is,--in the early sixties, I should say,--and she's just
as active and up to date and foxy as Martha is logy and antique and
dull. While Martha is sayin' grace Zenobia is gen'rally pourin' herself
out a glass of port.

About once a week Martha loads herself into an old horse cab and goes
off to a meetin' of the foreign mission society, or something like
that; but almost every afternoon Zenobia goes whizzin' off in a taxi,
maybe to hear some long-haired violinist, maybe to sit on the platform
with Emma Goldman and Bouck White and applaud enthusiastic when the
established order gets another jolt. Just as likely as not too, she'll
bring some of 'em home