That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone pidgin-English devised by every family of married sisters as protection against the neighbours and Central.  Translated, it ran thus: 

“He looked straight at me.  My dear, I thought I’d die!  But at least he had sense enough not to speak.  She was one of those limp, willowy creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened to a baby stare, and couldn’t, she was so crazy to get her hands on those hats.  I saw it all in one awful minute.  You know the way I do.  I suppose some people would call her pretty.  I don’t.  And her colour!  Well!  And the most expensive-looking hats.  Aigrettes, and paradise, and feathers.  Not one of them under seventy-five.  Isn’t it disgusting!  At his age!  Suppose Ethel had been with me!”

The next time it was Stell who saw them.  In a restaurant.  She said it spoiled her evening.  And the third time it was Ethel.  She was one of the guests at a theatre party given by Nicky Overton II.  You know.  The North Shore Overtons.  Lake Forest.  They came in late, and occupied the entire third row at the opening performance of “Believe Me!” And Ethel was Nicky’s partner.  She was glowing like a rose.  When the lights went up after the first act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of her with what she afterward described as a blonde.  Then her uncle had turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face.  Then he had turned to face forward again, quickly.

“Who’s the old bird?” Nicky had asked.  Ethel had pretended not to hear, so he had asked again.

“My Uncle,” Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate face, and down to her throat.  Nicky had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had gone up ever so slightly.

It spoiled Ethel’s evening.  More than that, as she told her mother of it later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her life.

Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate, kimonoed hour that precedes bedtime.  She gesticulated heatedly with her hair brush.

“It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.  Perfectly disgusting.  There’s no fool like an old fool.  Imagine!  A creature like that.  At his time of life.”

There exists a strange and loyal kinship among men.  “Well, I don’t know,” Ben said now, and even grinned a little.  “I suppose a boy’s got to sow his wild oats some time.”

“Don’t be any more vulgar than you can help,” Eva retorted.  “And I think you know, as well as I, what it means to have that Overton boy interested in Ethel.”

“If he’s interested in her,” Ben blundered, “I guess the fact that Ethel’s uncle went to the theatre with some one who wasn’t Ethel’s aunt won’t cause a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, will it?”

“All right,” Eva had retorted.  “If you’re not man enough to stop it, I’ll have to, that’s all.  I’m going up there with Stell this week.”