all that's ridiculous, did she treasure the
funeral wheat wreath in the walnut frame? Nothing is more _passe_ than
a last summer's hat, yet the leghorn and pink-cambric-rose thing in the
tin trunk was the one Mrs. Brewster had worn when a bride. Then the
plaid kilted dress with the black velvet monkey jacket that Pinky had
worn when she spoke her first piece at the age of seven--well, these
were things that even the rapacious eye of Miz' Merz (by-the-day) passed
by unbrightened by covetousness.

The smell of soap and water, and cedar, and moth balls, and dust, and
the ghost of a perfumery that Pinky used to use pervaded the hot attic.
Mrs. Brewster, head and shoulders in a trunk, was trying not to listen
and not to seem not to listen to Miz' Merz' recital of her husband's
relations' latest flagrancy.

"'Families is nix,' I says. 'I got my own family to look out fuh,' I
says. Like that. 'Well,' s's he, 'w'en it comes to _that_,' s's he, 'I
guess I got some--'" Punctuated by thumps, spatterings, swashings and
much heavy breathing, so that the sound of light footsteps along the
second-floor hallway, a young clear voice calling, then the same
footsteps, fleeter now, on the attic stairway, were quite unheard.

Pinky's arm were around her mother's neck and for one awful moment it
looked as if both were to be decapitated by the trunk lid, so violent
had been Mrs. Brewster's start of surprise.

Incoherent little cries, and sentences unfinished.

"Pinky! Why--my baby! We didn't get your telegram. Did you--"

"No; I didn't. I just thought I--Don't look so dazed, mummy--You're all
smudged too--what in the world!" Pinky straightened her hat and looked
about the attic. "Why, mother! You're--you're house cleaning!" There was
a stunned sort of look on her face. Pinky's last visit home had been in
June, all hammocks, and roses, and especially baked things, and motor
trips into the country.

"Of course. This is September. But if I'd known you were coming--Come
here to the window. Let mother see you. Is that the kind of hat
they're--why, its a winter one, isn't it? Already! Dear me, I've just
got used to the angle of my summer one. You must telephone father."

Miz' Merz damply calicoed, rose from a corner and came forward, wiping a
moist and parboiled hand on her skirt. "Ha' do, Pinky? Ain't forgot your
old friends, have you?"

"It's Mrs. Merz!" Pinky put her cool, sweet fingers into the other
woman's spongy clasp. "Why, hello,