under her cap a shortened and stiffer version of the side-curls with which she and all ‘the sex’ captivated the hearts of Charles Dickens and other novelists in their early youth.  She has soft and indeterminate features, and when she speaks her voice, a little shaken by the quaver of age, is soft and indeterminate also.  Gentle and lovable, you will be surprised to discover that she, also, has a will of her own; but for the present this does not show.  From the dimly illumined corner behind the lamp her voice comes soothingly to break the discussion.)

OLD LADY.  My dear, would you move the light a little nearer?  I’ve dropped a stitch.

LAURA (starting up).  Why, Mother dear, when did you come in?

JULIA (interposing with arresting hand).  Don’t!  You mustn’t try to touch her, or she goes.

LAURA.  Goes?

JULIA.  I can’t explain.  She is not quite herself.  She doesn’t always hear what one says.

LAURA (assertively).  She can hear me. (To prove it, she raises her voice defiantly.) Can’t you, Mother?

MRS. R. (the voice perhaps reminding her).  Jane, dear, I wonder what’s become of Laura, little Laura:  she was always so naughty and difficult to manage, so different from Martha—­and the rest.

LAURA.  Lor’, Julia!  Is it as bad as that?  Mother, ‘little Laura’ is here, sitting in front of you.  Don’t you know me?

MRS. R. Do you remember, Jane, one day when we’d all started for a walk, Laura had forgotten to bring her gloves, and I sent her back for them?  And on the way she met little Dorothy Jones, and she took her gloves off her, and came back with them just as if they were her own.

LAURA.  What a good memory you have, Mother!  I remember it too.  She was an odious little thing, that Dorothy—­always so whiney-piney.

JULIA.  More tea, Laura?

(Laura pushes her cup at her without remark, for she has been kept waiting; then, in loud tones, to suit the one whom she presumes to be rather deaf:)

LAURA.  Mother!  Where are you living now?

MRS. R. I’m living, my dear.

LAURA.  I said ‘where?’

JULIA.  We live where it suits us, Laura.

LAURA.  Julia, I wasn’t addressing myself to you.  Mother, where are you living?...  Why, where has she gone to?

(For now we perceive that this gentle Old Lady so devious in her conversation has a power of self-possession, of which, very retiringly, she avails herself.)

JULIA (improving the occasion, as she hands back the cup, with that touch of superiority so exasperating to a near relative).  Now you see!  If you press her too much, she goes....  You’ll have to accommodate yourself, Laura.

LAURA (imposing her own explanation).  I think you gave me green tea, Julia ... or have had it yourself.

JULIA (knowing better).  The dear Mother seldom stays long, except when she finds me alone.