luding it appeared on one occasion a policeman. She inquired of the
twins whether they had ever seen a new-made widow in a wind. Chicago,
she said, was a windy place, and Mr. Bilton passed in its windiest
month. Her long veil, as she proceeded down the streets on the daily
constitutional she considered it her duty toward the living to take, for
one owes it to one's friends to keep oneself fit and not give way, was
blown hither and thither in the buffeting cross-currents of that uneasy
climate, and her walk in the busier streets was a series of
entanglements. Embarrassing entanglements, said Mrs. Bilton. Fortunately
the persons she got caught in were delicacy and sympathy itself; often,
indeed, seeming quite overcome by the peculiar poignancy of the
situation, covered with confusion, profuse in apologies. Sometimes the
wind would cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above
her head in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a
moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of any
one who happened to be near, like a cord. It did this once about the
body of the policeman directing the traffic, by whose side she had
paused, and she had to walk round him backwards before it could be
unwound. The Chicago evening papers, prompt on the track of a sensation,
had caused her friends much painful if only short-lived amazement by
coming out with huge equivocal headlines:

WELL-KNOWN SOCIETY WIDOW AND POLICEMAN CAUGHT TOGETHER

and beginning their description of the occurrence by printing her name
in full. So that for the first sentence or two her friends were a prey
to horror and distress, which turned to indignation on discovering there
was nothing in it after all.

The twins, their eyes on Mrs. Bilton's face, their hands clasped round
their knees, their bodies sitting on the grass at her feet, occasionally
felt as they followed her narrative that they were somehow out of their
depth and didn't quite understand. It was extraordinarily exasperating
to them to be so completely muzzled. They were accustomed to elucidate
points they didn't understand by immediate inquiry; they had a habit of
asking for information, and then delivering comments on it.

This condition of repression made them most uncomfortable. The ilex tree
in the field below the house, to which Mrs. Bilton shepherded them each
morning and afternoon for the first three days, became to them, in spite
of its beauty wit