"Who are you children, anyway?" she said. "My name is Ruthy," I explained. "And this is my brother Carol." She began to look at Carol all over again. She reached out and shook him by the shoulder. "Dumbness!" she said. "Why let Sister do all the talking?" My stomach felt pretty queer. "My brother Carol _can't_ talk," I explained. "He _is_ dumb!" The Lady turned very red. "Oh dear--Oh dear--Oh dear," she said. She opened her purse. She took out a dollar bill. "Surely something could be done about it!" she said. "We are not looking for money," I explained. "We are perfectly rich. We have warm underalls. And two parents. And an older sister. We have a tame coon. And a tame crow. Our Father could paint the house any Autumn he wanted to if he'd rather do it than plant Tulips." The Lady looked at her watch. It was a bright blue watch no bigger than a violet is. "This is all very interesting," she said. "But at the obnoxious hotel which you run in this village dinner is at twelve o'clock and if I'm not there at exactly that moment there will not be another dinner, I suppose, until twelve o'clock the next day. So----" "Probably not," I said. "So if you don't feel timid at all about walking out with strangers, my brother Carol and I will walk home to the Hotel with you and write our book as we go." The Lady bit herself. She bit herself in the lip. She began to walk very fast. Carol walked very fast on one side of her. I walked very fast on the other. Carol carried the book. He carried it wide open so as to be all ready any moment. I carried the pencil. "Can you tell me," said the Lady, "just why you and your brother have picked upon me as the first victim of your most astonishing interrogations?" "Because you are the only Lady we ever saw in our lives that we didn't know who she was!" I explained. "And that makes it more interesting!" "O--h," said the Lady. She gave a queer little gasp. It was the Hotel happening! She ran up the hotel steps. There was a Gentleman waiting for her at the top of the steps. He was a tall Gentleman with a very cross mustache. The Lady whispered something to him. He shook his mustache at us. "Get out of here, you Young Scamps!" he cried. "Get out of here, I say! _Get out!_" No one had ever shaken his mustache at us before. We sat down on the step to think about it. The Gentleman ran off to call the Hotel Proprietor. The Lady looked a little sorry. She came running back. She stooped down. She took the book from Carol. And the pencil from me. She laughed a little. "You funny--funny children," she said. "What is it you want to know? The Most Beautiful Smell in the whole wide world,--is that it?--The Most Beautiful Smell in the whole wide world?" She looked back over her shoulder. She wrote very fast. Her cheeks looked pink. She banged the book together just the first second she had finished. She pulled my ear. "I'm--I'm sorry," she said.