They took their tea with him,—­the two families,—­every Sunday night.  Agatha Ledwith “filled him in” a pair of slippers that very first Christmas; he sat there in the corner with his old leather ones on, when they came, and left them, for the most part, to their own mutual entertainment, until the tea was ready.  It was a sort of family exchange; all the plans and topics came up, particularly on the Ledwith side, for Mrs. Ripwinkley was a good listener, and Laura a good talker; and the fun,—­that you and I and Rachel Froke could guess,—­yes, and a good deal of unsuspected earnest, also,—­was all there behind the old gentleman’s “Christian Age,” as over brief mentions of sermons, or words about books, or little brevities of family inquiries and household news, broke small floods of excitement like water over pebbles, as Laura and her daughters discussed and argued volubly the matching and the flouncing of a silk, or the new flowering and higher pitching of a bonnet,—­since “they are wearing everything all on the top, you know, and mine looks terribly meek;” or else descanted diffusely on the unaccountableness of the somebodies not having called, or the bother and forwardness of the some-other-bodies who had, and the eighty-three visits that were left on the list to be paid, and “never being able to take a day to sit down for anything.”

“What is it all for?” Mrs. Ripwinkley would ask, over again, the same old burden of the world’s weariness falling upon her from her sister’s life, and making her feel as if it were her business to clear it away somehow.

“Why, to live!” Mrs. Ledwith would reply.  “You’ve got it all to do, you see.”

“But I don’t really see, Laura, where the living comes in.”

Laura opens her eyes.

“Slang?” says she.  “Where did you get hold of that?”

“Is it slang?  I’m sure I don’t know.  I mean it.”

“Well, you are the funniest!  You don’t catch anything.  Even a by-word must come first-hand from you, and mean something!”

“It seems to me such a hard-working, getting-ready-to-be, and then not being.  There’s no place left for it,—­because it’s all place.”

“Gracious me, Frank!  If you are going to sift everything so, and get back of everything!  I can’t live in metaphysics:  I have to live in the things themselves, amongst other people.”

“But isn’t it scene and costume, a good deal of it, without the play?  It may be that I don’t understand, because I have not got into the heart of your city life; but what comes of the parties, for instance?  The grand question, beforehand, is about wearing, and then there’s a retrospection of what was worn, and how people looked.  It seems to be all surface.  I should think they might almost send in their best gowns, or perhaps a photograph,—­if photographs ever were becoming,—­as they do visiting cards.”

“Aunt Frank,” said Desire, “I don’t believe the ‘heart of city life’ is in the parties, or the parlors.  I believe there’s a great lot of us knocking round amongst the dry goods and the furniture that never get any further.  People must be living, somewhere, behind the fixings.  But there are so many people, nowadays, that have never quite got fixed!”