She was all of that. Get Gertrude Maud. She looms before us, large and full of figure, majestic of bearing and fair of face, her general aspect indeed a very general aspect. She was competent by inheritance and domineering by instinct. It was common talk in the circle in which Gertrude Maud moved, towing Chester behind her, that she had Bohemian leanings. True, she had never smoked a cigarette in all her blameless life, nor touched her lips to strong drink; nor yet had she patronised studio teas and attended the indoor anarchistic revels of the parlour-radicals established in the neighbourhood of Washington Square. Rather she betrayed her Bohemian trend by what she wore than by what she did. She was addicted to festooning about her neck large polished beads of the more popular hard woods and upon her bosom plaquelike articles which apparently had originated with a skilled cabinetmaker and joiner. Her wrists and her forearms she adorned with art-work bracelets of hammered metals set with large muddy-looking stones--almost anything that would look well in a collection of geological specimens was, in the eyes of Gertrude Maud, jewelry. Her costumes of state, displayed in connection with these ornamentations culled from the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, were cut square in the neck and extended straight up and down, being ungirthed at the waistline but set off with red and blue edgings, after the style of fancy tea towels. As her woman friends often remarked in tones of admiration, she had never worn stays in her life, and yet just look what a figure she had! Sometimes, the weather being favourable, she wore sandals. Excelling, as she did, in the social graces, Mrs. Pilkins was greatly in demand for neighbourhood parties. She was an amateur palmist of great note. At a suitable time in the course of the evening's festivities she would possess herself of the left hand of some gentleman or lady present--usually a gentleman's hand--and holding it palm upward, she would gently massage its surface and then begin uttering little gasping sounds betokening intense surprise and gratification. "Do you know, really," she would say when she had in part recovered, such being the regular formula, "I don't believe in all my experience I hardly ever saw such an interesting hand?"