Where is our Mother?

JULIA. She comes--sometimes.

LAURA. Why isn't she here always?

JULIA (_with pained sweetness_). I don't know, Laura. I never ask
questions.

LAURA. Really, Julia, I shall be afraid to open my mouth presently!

JULIA (_long-suffering still_). When you see her you will understand. I
told her you were coming, so I daresay she will look in.

LAURA. 'Look in'!

JULIA. Perhaps. That is her chair, you remember. She always sits there,
still.

(ENTER _Hannah with the coal_.)

Just a little on, please, Hannah--only a little.

LAURA. This isn't China tea: it's Indian, three and sixpenny.

JULIA. Mine is ten shilling China.

LAURA. Lor', Julia! How are you able to afford it?

JULIA. A little imagination goes a long way here, you'll find. Once I
tasted it. So now I can always taste it.

LAURA. Well! I wish I'd known.

JULIA. Now you _do_.

LAURA. But I never tasted tea at more than three-and-six. Had I known, I
could have got two ounces of the very best, and had it when----

JULIA. A lost opportunity. Life is full of them.

LAURA. Then you mean to tell me that if I had indulged more then, I could
indulge more now?

JULIA. Undoubtedly. As I never knew what it was to wear sables, I have to
be content with ermine.

LAURA. Lor', Julia, how paltry!

(_While this conversation has been going on, a gentle old lady has
appeared upon the scene, unnoticed and unannounced. One perceives, that
is 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 sti