ding ourselves in Eastridge, and our entire
satisfaction with our prospects and surroundings. Then Mrs. Talbert's
mother inquired, as delicately as possible, what denominations,
religious and medical, we were of, how many children we had, and whether
mostly boys or girls, and where and how long we had been married. She
was glad, she said, that we had taken the place next them, after our
brief sojourn in the furnished house where we had first lived, and
said that there was only one objection to the locality, which was
the prevalence of moths; they obliged you to put away your things in
naphtha-balls almost the moment the spring opened. She wished to know
what books my wife was presently reading, and whether she approved of
women's clubs to the extent that they were carried to in some places.
She believed in book clubs, but to her mind it was very questionable
whether the time that ladies gave to writing papers on so many different
subjects was well spent. She thought it a pity that so many things were
canned, nowadays, and so well canned that the old arts of pickling and
preserving were almost entirely lost. In the conversation, where she
bore a leading part as long as she remained in the room, her mind took
a wide range, and visited more human interests than my wife was at first
able to mention, though afterward she remembered so many that I formed
the notion of something encyclopedic in its compass. When she reached
the letter Z, she rose and took leave of my wife, saying that now she
must go and lie down, as it appeared to be her invariable custom to do
(in behalf of the robust health which she had inherited unimpaired from
a New England ancestry), at exactly half-past four every afternoon.
It was this, she said, more than any one thing that enabled her to go
through so much as she did; but through the door which she left open
behind her my wife heard Talbert's voice saying, in mixed mockery and
tenderness, "Don't forget your tonic, mother," and hers saying, "No, I
won't, Cyrus. I never forget it, and it's a great pity you don't take
it, too."

It was our conclusion from all the facts of this call, when we came
to discuss them in the light of some friendly gossip which we had
previously heard, that the eldest daughter of the Talberts came honestly
by her love of ruling if she got it from her grandmother, but that she
was able to indulge it oftener, and yet not so often as might have been
supposed from the mild reticen