The telephone in the hall rang startlingly, unexpectedly.

"Let me go, Milly."

"But who in the world! Nobody knows we're--"

He was at the telephone. "Who? Who? Oh." He turned: "It's Miz' Merz. She
says her little Minnie went by at six and saw a light in the house.
She--Hello! What?... She says she wants to know if she's to save time
for you at the end of the month for the April cleaning."

Mrs. Brewster took the receiver from him: "The twenty-fifth, as usual,
Miz' Merz. The twenty-fifth, as usual. The attic must be a sight."




OLD LADY MANDLE


Old lady Mandle was a queen. Her demesne, undisputed, was a six-room
flat on South Park Avenue, Chicago. Her faithful servitress was Anna, an
ancient person of Polish nativity, bad teeth, and a cunning hand at
cookery. Not so cunning, however, but that old lady Mandle's was more
artful still in such matters as meat-soups, broad noodles, fish with egg
sauce, and the like. As ladies-in-waiting, flattering yet jealous,
admiring though resentful, she had Mrs. Lamb, Mrs. Brunswick, and Mrs.
Wormser, themselves old ladies and erstwhile queens, now deposed. And
the crown jewel in old lady Mandle's diadem was my son Hugo.