"You? Of course you're not like Fred! You couldn't do the things she does!" Laura gave him a cool glance: "I promised this dance to Jack McKnight. Perhaps we'd better start in?" "I'd like to wring his neck," Howard declared, rising reluctantly. When she and Jack were half-way down the room she told him that there was a new engagement in the air. "The girl's perfectly fine, but the man makes me tired," said Lolly, lifting her pretty foot in the prettiest and daintiest kick imaginable. "Tell us," Jack entreated, one hand holding hers, and the other spread over her young shoulder-blades. "Oh, it isn't out yet," she said, "and I don't know that it's--really _on_--but I bet it--will be--pretty soon!" And she tossed her head a little viciously. CHAPTER VI The two Misses Graham were very much interested in their real-estate agent. "A _girl_, to be in business," said the younger sister, doubtfully. "It's very nice in her," said the elder sister. "I suppose the Paytons have lost their money and she has to support the family." "She is certainly capable," Miss Mary admitted. "But it does seem strange for her to work in this way, when she could give music lessons, for instance." "Perhaps she's not musical," Miss Eliza objected. "I hate to have a girl pounding the piano, when her talent lies in scrubbing floors." Miss Eliza Graham looked like a frayed old eagle; perhaps because for seventy years she had flapped unavailing wings against the Graham traditions. Those traditions had kept her from the serious study of music, and later they had "saved" her from marriage with a man who had very little money. The younger Miss Graham looked, and was, as contented as a pouter-pigeon teetering about in a comfortable barn-yard. It was Miss Eliza, tall, thin, piercing-eyed, and sweet-hearted at seventy-two, who had, as she expressed it, "dug Mary up," and brought her to town for the winter. Miss Eliza was for a hotel, but Miss Mary felt that unmarried ladies should have the dignity of their own roof. "We can always have the escort of a messenger-boy, if we go out in the evening," she told her sister, who agreed, her eyes twinkling. "Excellent idea. We can spank him if he doesn't behave properly!" "Oh, my _dear_ Eliza!" Miss Mary protested, but she smiled indulgently. Eliza was the most precious thing in the world to the little, plump lady who made endless excuses to herself, and to everybody else, for "dear Eliza's ways." It was a "way" of Eliza's to forgive Youth for almost anything it did.... "Of course, Youth makes Age uncomfortable," she would concede. "New wine is very hard on old bottles! But if the bottles burst, it isn't the fault of the wine, it is the fault of the bottles--_for having been empty_!" The significance of those last words was quite lost on Miss Mary.