the mobile little mind. After several moments of blissful anguish of
indecision, Sylvia decided on a peach ice-cream soda, and thereafter
was nothing but sense of taste as she ecstatically drew through a
straw the syrupy, foamy draught of nectar. She took small sips at a
time and held them in the back of her mouth till every minute bubble
of gas had rendered up its delicious prickle to her tongue. Her
consciousness was filled to its uttermost limits with a voluptuous
sense of present physical delight.

And yet it was precisely at this moment that from her subconscious
mind, retracing with unaided travail a half-forgotten clue, there
sprang into her memory a complete phrase of what her father had said.
She gave one more suck to the straw and laid it aside for a moment
to say in quite a comfortable accent to her aunt: "Oh yes, now I
remember. He said she didn't care for him any more than for the first
man she might have solicited in the street." For an instant the words
came back as clearly as though they had just been uttered, and she
repeated them fluently, returning thereupon at once to the charms of
the tall, foam-filled frosted glass.

Evidently Aunt Victoria did not follow this sudden change of subject,
for she asked blankly, "_Who_? Who didn't care for who?"

"Why, I supposed, Pauline for Ephraim Smith. It was that that made
Father so mad," explained Sylvia, sucking dreamily, her eyes on
the little maelstrom created in the foaming liquid by the straw,
forgetting everything else. The luxurious leisure in which she
consumed her potation made it last a long time, and it was not until
her suction made only a sterile rattling in the straw that she looked
up at her aunt to thank her.