OLD LADY. My dear, would you move the light a little nearer? I've dropped
a stitch.

LAURA (_starting up_). Why, Mother dear, when did you come in?

JULIA (_interposing with arresting hand_). Don't! You mustn't try to
touch her, or she goes.

LAURA. Goes?

JULIA. I can't explain. She is not quite herself. She doesn't always hear
what one says.

LAURA (_assertively_). She can hear me. (_To prove it, she raises
her voice defiantly._) Can't you, Mother?

MRS. R. (_the voice perhaps reminding her_). Jane, dear, I wonder
what's become of Laura, little Laura: she was always so naughty and
difficult to manage, so different from Martha--and the rest.

LAURA. Lor', Julia! Is it as bad as that? Mother, 'little Laura' is here,
sitting in front of you. Don't you know me?

MRS. R. Do you remember, Jane, one day when we'd all started for a walk,
Laura had forgotten to bring her gloves, and I sent her back for them? And
on the way she met little Dorothy Jones, and she took her gloves off her,
and came back with them just as if they were her own.

LAURA. What a good memory you have, Mother! I remember it too. She was an
odious little thing, that Dorothy--always so whiney-piney.