"That? Oh, dear, yes!" Or: "Well--I don't know. You can take that home
with you if you want it. It might make over for Minnie."

Yet, why in the name of all that's ridiculous did she treasure the
funeral wheat wreath in the walnut frame? Nothing is more _passé_ than a
last summer's hat, yet the leghorn and pink-cambric-rose thing in the
tin trunk was the one Mrs. Brewster had worn when a bride. Then the
plaid kilted dress with the black velvet monkey jacket that Pinky had
worn when she spoke her first piece at the age of seven--well, these
were things that even the rapacious eye of Miz' Merz (by-the-day) passed
by unbrightened by covetousness.

The smell of soap and water, and cedar, and moth balls, and dust, and
the ghost of a perfumery that Pinky used to use pervaded the hot attic.
Mrs. Brewster, head and shoulders in a trunk, was trying not to listen
and not to seem not to listen to Miz' Merz's recital of her husband's
relations' latest flagrancy.

"'Families is nix,' I says. 'I got my own fam'ly to look out fur,' I
says. Like that. 'Well,' s's he, 'w'en it comes to _that_,' s's he, 'I
guess I got some--'" Punctuated by thumps, spatterings, swashings, and
much heavy breathing, so that the sound of light footsteps along the
second-floor hallway, a young, clear voice calling, then the same
footsteps, fleeter now, on the attic stairway, were quite unheard.

* * * * *

Pinky's arms were around her mother's neck and for one awful moment it
looked as if both were to be decapitated by the trunk lid, so violent
had been Mrs. Brewster's start of surprise.