I first saw her in Lydia's drawing-room. I had found it empty on entering, but presently there came into it a little body with a hand stretched up, in her eagerness to be cordial, at the level of her head, and behind it a smirking face bubbling over with the effort of maidenly reserve to keep within bounds an overflowing heart. "Welcome to New York!" she said. "I'm _so_ glad to see you!" She lisped a little, and as she emphasized the word "_tho_" she shook her head in a little confiding way, and the smirk deepened into a nervous grin. I had been so long in New York that I felt her welcome a little superfluous, but it was part of the doctrine, which kept her happiness alive, that New York had not completed a welcome to a stranger until it had been expressed by her. I was a little confused by her effusiveness, for I did not wish to offend an aunt of Lydia's, and yet I felt it impossible to respond in proper proportion to her advances. "You must be Aunt Tiny," I said. "I have often heard of you." I refrained from telling her what I had heard; how she had constituted one of the favorite types for Ariston's mimicry; how, indeed, Ariston had gone through the very performance I had just witnessed, in which the uplifted hand, the smirk, and the lisping "_tho_" had lost nothing in Ariston's art. "Dear Lydia!" she exclaimed; and in the pronunciation of the "d" in "dear" she put exaggerated significance and added a shake of her head. She wore little corkscrew curls; every time she shook her head the curls quivered with suppressed agitation. "Do sit down," she added--with unnecessary emphasis in the "do." There was nothing to be done but to resign myself; she drew up a chair quite close to mine and settled down in it as an army might settle down for a Trojan siege. "Do tell me--I am dying to know--how did it happen and what do you think of us? You don't look very different from us; you remind me of Chairo, and he is thought _very_ handsome"--her head and curls shook again and she giggled consciously--"_very, very_ handsome!" She giggled still more and her eyes assumed a coy meaningfulness that increased my discomfort. I have never been able to understand why this poor little woman--perfectly innocent of any real ability to harm--should have been able to cause me so much annoyance; but there was something in her glance that made me wish to throw things at her. "And Lydia--isn't Lydia beautiful?" There was something caressing in her tone as she puckered up her lips and dwelt on the word "beautiful" that exasperated me again. "What _do_ you suppose she is going to do? _Is_ she going to accept the mission or marry Chairo? She is a great flirt, you know; quite a terrible flirt! But _I_ shouldn't talk of flirting!"--and she giggled again the same suggestive giggle. "_We_ mustn't be hard on flirts, must we?"