“What I never been able to figger out—­how can a dame like that fool herself beyond a certain age?  Seams in her face!  And not a soul but would know she got her hair like the United States acquired Louisiana.  That lady’s power of belief is enormous.  And I bet she couldn’t put two and two together without making a total wreck of the problem.  Like fair time a year ago, when she was down to Red Gap taking up the war.  She comes along Fourth Street in her uniform one morning, fresh from the hands of this hired accomplice of hers, and meets Cousin Egbert Floud and me where we’d stopped to talk a minute.  She is bubbling with war activity as usual, but stopped and bubbled at us a bit—­kind of hale and girlish, you might say.  We passed the time of day; and, being that I’m a first-class society liar, I say how young and fresh she looks; and she gets the ball and bats it right back to Cousin Egbert.

“‘You’d never dream,’ says she, ’what my funny little mite of a Japanese maid calls me!  You’d really never guess!  She calls me Madam Peach Blossom!  Isn’t that perfectly absurd, Mr. Floud?’

“And poor Cousin Egbert, instead of giggling in a hearty manner and saying ’Oh, come now, Mrs. Popper!  What’s in the least absurd about that?’—­like he was meant to and like any gentleman would of—­what does the poor silly do but blink at her a couple of times like an old barn owl that’s been startled and say ’Yes, ma’am!’—­flat and cold, just like that!

“It almost made an awkward pause; but the lady pretended she had been saying something to me, so she couldn’t hear him.  That Cousin Egbert!  He certainly wouldn’t ever get very high in the diplomatic service of anybody’s country.

“And here’s this grand ball of the Allied nations in costume, give in Genevieve May’s palatial residence.  It must of throwed a new panic into Berlin when they got the news off the wire.  Matter of fact, I don’t see how them Germans held out long as they did, with Genevieve May Popper putting crimps into ’em with her tireless war activities.  That proves itself they’d been long preparing for the fray.  Of course, with Genevieve May and this here new city marshal, Fotch, the French got, it was only a question of time.  Genevieve is sure one born taker-up!  Now she’s made a complete circle of the useful arts and got round to dancing again.  Yes, sir!”

I affected to believe I was solitary in the room.  This time it did not work—­even measurably.  Almost at once came:  “I said she was the darndest woman in the world to take things up!” The tone compelled notice, so I said “Indeed!” and “You don’t say!” with a cautiously extended space between them, and tried to go on thinking.

Then I knew the woman’s full habit of speech was strong upon her and that one might no longer muse upon a caught trout—­even one to weigh well up toward four pounds.  So I remembered that I was supposed to be a gentleman.

“Go right ahead and talk,” I murmured.