More inquiry, the disdaining of a cab, and a twenty minutes' walk along curving asphalt walks with houses far enough back to lose their identities among trees. A sense of summer and hope swept her. The Dupree place was an old homestead of painted gray brick and ugly with the millwork and gable bulging wall and tower of American architecture in most horrific mood, but a smooth green lawn fell plushily away from it on four sides and it was all Lilly could do to keep from running up the walk. Her child in the sweet air of this fine old spot! Out of her eight dollars a week she could manage four, even five if need be! Her embarrassment was only temporary. Any arrears incurred she could make up later if only it could be arranged. There were long, cool halls, a sun-flooded kindergarten, an open-air playroom on the roof, and a white-enameled nursery with a row of ducklings waddling across the walls, and Mrs. Dupree herself, who stopped at each stair landing for ready and copious explanation. She was very corseted, very mannered, and quick to attitudinize. A flight of framed photographs of her followed the staircase upward step by step, in which she registered at a considerably younger period such staple states as Anger, Meditation, Humiliation, Vengeance, Love. She was still a commanding figure with copper-colored hair that for ten years had wanted to turn gray, a face of furiously combated wrinkles, and eyes deep with black or blackened lashes. She was the declamatory kind of Lady Macbeth who had stepped into the role flatly on a No. 7 last, rather than from a Juliette who had fattened into the part; that congenial stateliness now thrown completely out of plumb by a violent limp, which, resulting from a railway accident, threw out her entire left leg as she walked. All the velvet was unconsciously out in Lilly's voice coping with the Dupree extravagance of manner. "Do you accept them as young as four weeks, Mrs. Dupree?" "Bless you, dearie, the three weeks' duckie darling of Cissie de Veaux is our youngest at present." "The comic-opera Cissie de Veaux?" "Why, honey child, Cissie tells it on herself, she never would have had those ducky twins of hers five years ago if she hadn't known there was a Minnie Dupree Infantary. That is our aim, here, you know. To give the child of superior professional parents the most superior environment that money can buy." "How much--" "Elaine Bringhouse, daughter of Harold Bringhouse. Ever seen him in 'Hamlet'? Before your time, I guess! Poor Harold in his day was the best all-around Hamlet in the country. Cry! I wish you could have seen that child's father cry on Elaine's fifth birthday. We don't keep them over five years of age here, you know. Bless her! she's in a road company of 'Little Miss Muffet' now. Yes, indeedy, dearie, that's a book of testimonials there on that table from my children's parents. I take it you're a professional, dearie?" "Oh yes--yes. Concert and--vaudeville."