Mrs. Payson knew what was going on. She knew the price of coal, and the whereabouts of the Cingalese troops, and the closing Steel quotations, and whether duvetyne was going to be good this winter, and how much the Claflin estate amounted to, and why the DeWitts dropped their divorce proceedings. More than this, she read aloud extracts from these items and commented thereon. She was the kind of woman who rarely breakfasts in a kimono. When she did it was so restrained and somber in cut and colour that the Nipponese would have failed to recognise its origin. Her white hair was primly dressed. Through spectacles worn at a rakish angle and set rather low down on her nose she surveyed the antics of the world and pronounced upon them as a judge upon a day's grist of cases. To one who preferred to get the first-page news first-hand it was a maddening practice. "I see they predict a coal famine. I don't know what we'll do in this house. If I didn't know I'd practically have to give it away I'd sell and move into a flat out south.... They're going to wear those capes again next winter. I should think they'd freeze in 'em. Though I remember we used to wear them altogether--dolmans, we called them. I see your friend Winnie Steppler has gone to France for her paper. Woman of her age! I should think she'd stay home.... H'm! Ben Gartz is captain of the Manufacturing Jewelers' Liberty Loan committee.... What time did you come in last night, Lottie? I didn't hear you." Aunt Charlotte, breakfasting across the table, looked up. Lottie poured herself another cup of coffee. She was drinking a great deal of coffee lately; using it frankly as a stimulant. "About midnight." "Did you have a nice time?" "Interesting," Lottie said, gravely. She sensed that her mother was listening intently behind the newspaper. "Did you mean what you just said about wanting to sell the house and moving into a flat out south?" Mrs. Payson's spectacles showed, half-moons, above the paper's horizon. "I might. Hulda's going to marry that man. He doesn't want to go to war. They say you can't get a girl now for less than fifteen dollars a week. Fifteen! Well! I see myself! And now this coal shortage--and a four-story house. Still, we'd need a pretty big apartment." Lottie made her tone casual. "You ought to marry off Jeannette--and me." She knew that Ben Gartz leaped from a position of doubt to one of hope in her mother's mind. She knew, too, that her mother could no more force herself to speak of this hope than she could wear a pink silk and lace negligee. She would have considered both, somehow, indecent. She turned a page of the paper, elaborately careless. "I'd move out of this barn fast enough if there was only Charlotte and me to keep it up for." Lottie laughed a little. "You'd have to have a special room for Ole Bull, and your walnut bed and the hall hatrack. No modern flat----"