"Dear old Prue!" said Hilda. "I saw her the other day. I believe she's really happy. She don't say much, but she looks it. She's awfully swell, too. Why, you hear Mrs. Ralph Porter on all sides. She leads everything. That girl has more tact and diplomacy than any one I ever saw. Awfully nice girl, too. Here I am, always putting my foot in it. DeLancy says I fling a rope around my neck so surely as I open my mouth, and with each succeeding word I give it a jerk. Oh, dear me! I ought to be going. He'll be wild! Why, you don't look any too well. What's the matter with you, Nan? Aren't you happy, child?" "Yes. Mind your business!" said Nannie in the old defiant way. "Bless me! bless me! You haven't changed a mite! I thought marriage would improve you. Oh, do you know Evelyn Rogers was married the other day?" "No," said Nannie with quickened interest. "Yes--not at her home. She was visiting her aunt in New York, and there she married her villainous-looking professor, and would you believe it? I heard they went right off to the slums on a wedding trip, taking a thief, and an anarchist, and a murderer with them, as chaperons, I suppose. Oh, I ought to be going!" "To the slums?" asked Nannie. "No, no. I ought to get out of here. DeLancy is insane by this time, I know! I _must_ run!" "Hilda, you sit still and cool off! You've just been in a stew ever since you came." "I'm in one all the time. Do you remember what some of you girls said of me at that first meeting of the club--I'd be kept in a continual stew? Never were truer words spoken. Oh!" and she groaned loudly. "Why don't you get done--with it?" asked Nannie. "I can't," said Hilda coolly. "I'm in for it now and must go on to the bitter end. It's too late to chew the cud of reflection." "Don't count on the end," laughed Nannie, looking at her friend's rotund figure. "There's no end to you, Hilda. You're an all-round woman." "Indeed I am! If you could only see the number of offices I fill. I'm nurse, doctor, valet, messenger, and on cross days general vent for the humors." "Is he really ill?"