"For them as ain't got it--no, it ain't serious," said Birdie Miriam McCaffrey mockingly. "For them as ain't got it--it just tickles, that's all. Curse me for a-comin' here. That's my motto. 'The neighborhood's just alive with it,' says yer doctor. 'It's in the air. It's epileptic. Why,' says he, 'there's hardly a house where they ain't got mumps.' Nice for me, eh? If them's yer Christian principles, luring a hard-working woman, with a child, into a mumpy house, and a-saying no word to put her on her guard--" "You can go whenever you are ready," I said loftily, "and no impertinence, please." "As soon as my Letitia can be moved--if the poor thing ever lives through it--and I have me doubts, as she's that delicate--we'll go. Oh, we'll go, right enough. Don't you worry about that. Not if yez poured gold at me feet, and if I wuz a-perishing for want of a bit o' food, to keep body and soul together, would I stay in a house that's alive with germs. 'Yes,' says yer doctor, 'it's a germ. It's a mikey in the air.' Me poor Mike! 'A mikey in the air,' says he. And I only hope that me Muriel, and Rosalind, and Winnifred will be spared, as it's so catching. Why didn't ye tell me, Mrs. Fairfax? Why didn't ye say, when ye come down to Sixth Avenue, that there was diseases all around? Play fair; that's my motto. I don't believe in no underhand game, I don't. Not for me!" As she flounced out of the room, Letitia sank into a chair and burst into tears. The twittering of Birdie had been horribly effective. It had made me feel nervous and unstrung. Logic was quite unavailing, and for the first time in my life, I realized that those with a sense of humor might have fared better than we did. CHAPTER XI It was undignified, but necessary. Any other course would have been impossible. It was a case of bowing to the inevitable--and it seems to me that the inevitable simply exists for the sake of the curtseys bestowed upon it by unfortunates. One is always bowing and scraping to the inevitable. It is a species of toadyism that is invariably omitted from textbooks on the sublime art of sycophancy.