About that time we, in common with the rest of the Nation, took that upon our minds which was even more important than Mayme McCartney’s love affair.  War loomed imminently before us.  It was only a question of the fitting time to strike; and Our Square was feverishly reckoning up its military capacity.  The great day of the declaration came.  The Nation had drawn the sword.  In the week following, Our Square was invaded.

She descended upon us from the somber sumptuousness of a gigantic limousine, the majestic, the imposing, the formidable, the authoritative Mrs. S. Berthelin.  We knew at once who she was, because she led, by the ear, as it were, her hopeful progeny, young David.  I do not mean that she had an actual auricular grip on him, but the effect upon his woe-begone and brow-beaten person was the same.  He suggested vividly a spoiled and pretty lapdog being sternly conveyed to a detested bath.  She suggested a vivified bouquet of artificial flowers.  We hastily rallied our forces to meet her; the Little Red Doctor, the Bonnie Lassie, and myself.  Mrs. Berthelin opened her exordium in a tone of high philippic, not even awaiting the formalities of introduction.  But when I insisted upon these, and she learned that the Bonnie Lassie was Mrs. Cyrus Staten, she cringed.  Despite a desire to keep out of the society columns quite as genuine as that of Mrs. Berthelin’s to get in, the Cyrus Statens frequently figure among the Shining Ones, a fact almost painfully appreciated by our visitor.  After that it was easy to get her into the Bonnie Lassie’s house, where her eloquence could not draw a crowd.  To get young David there was not quite so easy.  He made one well-timed and almost successful effort to bolt, and even evinced signs of balking on the steps.

His punishment was awaiting him.  No sooner were we all settled in the Bonnie Lassie’s studio than the mother proceeded to regale us with a history and forecast of his career, beginning with his precocious infant lispings and terminating with his projected, though wholly indefinite, marriage into the Highest Social Circles.  To do David justice, he squirmed.

“Have you got him a job as a general in the army yet, ma’am?” inquired the Little Red Doctor suavely.

It was quite lost upon Mrs. Berthelin.  She informed us that a commission as Captain in the Quartermaster’s Department was arranged for, and she expected to have the young officer assigned to New York so that he could live at home in the comfort and luxury suitable to his wealth and condition.  And what she wanted us to understand clearly was that no designing little gutter-snipe was to be allowed to compromise David’s future.  She concluded with an imaginative and most unflattering estimate of Mayme McCartney’s character, manners, and morals, in the midst of which I heard a gasp.

It came from Mayme, standing, wide-eyed and white, in the doorway.  The front door had been left ajar, and, seeing the Berthelins’ monogrammed car outside, she had come in.  The oratress turned and stared.