Irma knowing that hunger stalked just around the corner, yet desiring to live alone with her boys, had been immensely relieved and at the same time almost uncontrollably irritated at the thought of the arrangement by which Tante Ilde was to be given the very relative freedom of the alcove. She had gone about the simple preparations for her taking possession in the best obstructionist manner. The alcove already contained the old brown plush divan, relic of the house in Baden, but Irma had shown an amazing unwillingness to clear out a certain little green and yellow chest of drawers which had "always" been between the windows in her living room and contained an unrelated accumulation of objects. "But she's got to have something to keep her things in!" Corinne had cried, at the time the fatal arrangement was being made. This was so obvious that Irma had made no further demur than to say: "I didn't think she had that much left." "You've never heard about the lilies of the field?" Corinne asked with her most oblique look, but it was lost on Irma who said: "What?" as she noisily dragged the chest of drawers into the alcove. "How these little pebbles hurt my feet," murmured Corinne further, and when Irma answered: "What hurts your feet?" she turned aside. Irma was clearly impervious. But she had emptied the drawers--all except the top one--quite ostentatiously. Various blessings flowed from Corinne, who brought their Sunday dinner and who could be counted on to get the often expensive materials for her needlework; she knew, too, that Corinne from time to time gave Mizzi a finely-pointed thrust of truth about what Irma called "jewing her down" in her prices. Corinne could quietly cut to the bone. Irma had been a skillful needlewoman even in the old days, now through Mizzi she kept abreast of the latest styles. That season the rage was for motifs of "petit point" which were being inserted in Suède handbags, making one of the famous Viennese leather novelties. She had once received 80,000 crowns, when 80,000 was something, for a tiny medallion, so fine that she had only been able to work on it on warm summer mornings with the window open, even the glass panes seemed to blur it somewhat, though that north window up those five flights of stairs was certainly as good a place as one could have for working. Irma being without sensibility, unconnected with her boys, had said further to Corinne on that same occasion: "Business is business," at which Corinne had ineffectually protested that it was just what it wasn't,--business.