"He liked it because I played it, perhaps," said Mrs. Bates, quietly. "Besides, why should you put it to those shocking words? It _is_ in that book," she continued, "and I've got one here just like it." "Is it the one with 'Roll on, Silver Moon,' and 'Wild roved the Indian maid, bright What's-her-name'?" "Bright Alfarata. Same one, exactly. Bring up another chair, and we'll go through a whole programme of classics--pruggrum, I mean." "Let's see, though," said Jane, looking at her watch. "Mercy me! where has the morning gone? It's after eleven o'clock." "Supposing it is after eleven; supposing it was after a hundred and eleven? You're going to stay to lunch." "I'd love to so much; but I just can't. I've got too many other scalps to take. So many thanks for yours! I'm going to work north towards the Monument--another Massacre!" "Well, Wednesday, then, without fail." They retraced their steps past the mournful Miss Peters and through the vast state bedroom. On the stairs Mrs. Bates said: "I _do_ remember your aunt, Mrs. Rhodes, now," The conscientious creature had been taxing her memory for an hour. Jane felt that this was a tribute, not to her aunt, but to herself. "Yes," Mrs. Bates went on, "she's a little, plump, dark woman, and when she sits down she wiggles and flounces and goes all in a heap--like this." Mrs. Bates illustrated by means of the window-seat on the landing. "Yes," assented Jane. She could not reproach Mrs. Bates for thus indulging her sense of humor in order to recoup herself for the tax on her memory. "And when she goes down-stairs, it's like this." She gathered up her gown and sidled down affectedly over the remaining steps. "That's it," said Jane, joining her in the hall below. Mrs. Bates opened the front door herself. "You can take the choo-choo cars at Sixteenth, you know, and get off at Van Buren. Oh, dear; excuse my baby-talk; our little Reginald--two months old, you know. I'll have Lottie home for that lunch of ours." "Don't apologize," said Jane. "I often use the same expression myself." "Why, is there a baby at your house!" "Well," said Jane, rather lamely, "Alice has got a little girl three years old." "So David Marshall is a grandfather? But what is there extraordinary in that?--I'm one myself." She stood in the big porch looking down the street--at nothing." Well, now I _am_ going to," she said, half to herself. "_That_ settles it!" She accompanied Jane half-way down the steps, bareheaded as she was, and in her morning-gown. A society reporter who happened to be passing originated the rumor that she had gone insane. "Good-luck, my child. Use my name everywhere. Take all that anybody offers. Good-by! Good-by!" Jane retraced her steps to kiss her. She had not kissed her own mother for ten years. VI