she hadn't stopped to listen at the dining-room door instead of going back to the kitchen.
"Oh, you might just put these in the pail, please, and I'll fix them when Mrs.— Kate, she's terrible, worse than the last one. We had an omelet for lunch that was just the color of a stove lid and about as tough. I'm nearly distracted. I said to Mrs. Whipple I just wished we could get into some nice boarding house, and, Kate Green, what do you think she said to me?"
"What?"
"Really, it's so awful, I don't believe I ought to repeat it. Well, you know her ears are as sharp as—as anything, but she pretended not to understand, and she said, 'Well, Carrie, that's a pretty suggestion, taking up our abode in a bawdy house! But I'm afraid we'd find some difficulty in being taken in!' Imagine saying such a thing at her age! Eighty-one years old! I was so embarrassed I nearly died!"
"Goodness! Where is she?"
"I think she's taking a nap. Don't look at the room. It's a sight, and I knocked over the card table when you rang the bell. I was trying to do a new solitaire Violetta Mortimer taught me. It's called Idiot's Delight, but I can't make it come out. Oh, Kate! I do feel so badly! Evangeline Mortimer wants to give me the darlingest Angora kitten; its fur is so thick that when it walks it shakes all over, and I do want it terribly"
