ind that I am the one that needs looking
after, my charmer!"

She tapped Miss Betty's cheek with her jeweled fingers as the two
mounted the veranda steps. "It will be worry enough for you to obey
yourself; a body sees that at the first blush. You have conscience
in your forehead and rebellion in your chin. Ha, ha, ha!" Here Mrs.
Tanberry sat upon, and obliterated, a large chair, Miss Carewe taking a
stool at her knee.

"People of our age oughtn't to be bothered with obeying; there'll be
time enough for that when we get old and can't enjoy anything. Ha, ha!"

Mrs. Tanberry punctuated her observations with short volleys of husky
laughter, so abrupt in both discharge and cessation that, until Miss
Betty became accustomed to the habit, she was apt to start slightly at
each salvo. "I had a husband--once," the lady resumed, "but only once,
my friend! He had ideas like your father's--your father is such an
imbecile!--and he thought that wives, sisters, daughters, and such like
ought to be obedient: that is, the rest of the world was wrong unless it
was right; and right was just his own little, teeny-squeeny prejudices
and emotions dressed up for a crazy masquerade as Facts. Poor man! He
only lasted about a year!" And Mrs. Tanberry laughed heartily.

"They've been at me time and again to take another." She lowered her
voice and leaned toward Betty confidentially. "Not I! I'd be willing
to engage myself to Crailey Gray (though Crailey hasn't got round to me
yet) for I don't mind just being engaged, my dear; but they'll have to
invent something better than a man before I marry any one of 'em again!
But I love 'em, I do, the Charming Billies! And you'll see how they
follow me!" She patted the girl's shoulder, her small eyes beaming
quizzically. "We'll have the gayest house in Rouen, ladybird! The young
men all go to the Bareauds', but they'll come here now, and we'll have
the Bareauds along with 'em. I've been away a long time, just finished
unpacking yesterday night when your father came in after the fire--Whoo!
what a state he was in with that devilish temper of his! Didn't I snap
him up when he asked me to come and stay with you? Ha, ha! I'd have
come, even if you hadn't been beautiful; but I was wild to be your
playmate, for I'd heard nothing but 'Miss Betty Carewe, Miss Betty
Carewe' from everybody I saw, since the minute my stage came in. You set
'em all mad at your ball, and I knew we'd make a glorious house-full,
you a