ridan, kneeling at the oven of the gas stove, laughed uneasily.

"Oh, you could hear that, could you?"

"Hear it! They heard it in Yonkers."

"Well," Mrs. Sheridan said, "she has always been high-strung, that one.
I remember years ago she'd be going into crying and raving fits. She's
got very deep affections, Mrs. Melrose, and when she gets thinking of
Theodore, and of Alice's accident, and this and that, she'll go right
off the handle. She had been crying, poor soul, and suddenly she began
this moaning and rocking. I told her I'd call someone if she didn't
stop, for she'd go from bad to worse, with me."

"But why with you, Aunt Kate? Do you know her so well?"

"Do I know them?" Mrs. Sheridan dug an opener into a can of corn with a
vigorous hand. "I know them all!"

"But how was that?" Norma persisted, now dropping her peeled potatoes
into dancing hot water.

"I've told you five thousand times, but you and Rose would likely have
one of your giggling fits on, and not a word would you remember!" her
aunt said. "I've told you that years ago, when your Uncle Tom died, and
I was left with two babies, and not much money, a friend of mine, a
milliner she was, told me that she knew a lady that wanted someone to
help manage her affairs--household affairs. Well, I'd often helped your
Uncle Tom with his books, and my mother was with me, to look out for the
children----"

"Where was I, Aunt Kate?"

"You! Wolf wasn't but three, and Rose a year old--where would you be?"

"I was minus two years," Norma said, sententiously. "I was part of the
cosmic all----"

"You be very careful how you talk about such things until you're a
married woman!" her aunt said. "Salt those potatoes, darling. Norma, can
you remember what I did with the corn that Rose liked so?"

Norma was attentive.

"You beat it up with eggs, and it came out a sort of puff," she
recalled. "I know--you put a little cornstarch in, to give it body!
Listen, Aunt Kate, how long did you stay with Mrs. Melrose?"

"Well, first I just watched her help for her, and paid the bills, and
went to market. And then I got gradually managing more and more; I'd go
to pay her interest, or deposit money, or talk to tenants; I liked it
and she liked me. And then she talked me into going to France with her,
but I cried all the way for my children, and I was glad enough to come
home again! She and Miss Annie spent some time over there, but I came
back. Miss Alice was in school, and