congresses of the wives, convened in Mrs. Peopping's back
parlor, Jeanette Peopping, aged four, sweet and blond, whom the Jetts
loved to borrow Sunday mornings, while she was still in her little
nightdress, playing paper dolls in the background.

Her embroidery hoop, with a large shaded pink rose in the working, had,
contrary to her custom, fallen from idle hands, and instead of following
the dart of the infinitesimal needle, Mrs. Jett's eyes were burningly
upon Mrs. Peopping, following, with almost lip-reading intensity, that
worthy lady's somewhat voluptuous mouthings.

She was a large, light person with protuberant blue eyes that looked as
if at some time they had been two-thirds choked from their sockets and
a characteristic of opening every sentence with her mouth shaped to an
explosive O, which she filled with as much breath as it would hold.

It had been a long tale of obstetrical fact and fancy, told plushily,
of course, against the dangerous little ears of Jeanette, and at its
conclusion Mrs. Peopping's steel-bead bag, half finished, lay in a
huddle at her feet, her pink and flabby face turned reminiscently toward
the fire.

"--and for three days six doctors gave me up. Why, I didn't see Jeanette
until the fourteenth day, when most women are up and out. The crisis,
you know. My night nurse, an awful sweet girl--I send her a Christmas
present to this day--said if I had been six years younger it wouldn't
have gone so hard with me. I always say if the men knew what we women go
through--Maybe if some of them had to endure the real pain themselves
they would have something to do besides walk up and down the hall and
turn pale at the smell of ether coming through the keyhole. Ah me! I've
been a great sufferer in my day."

"Thu, thu, thu," and, "I could tell tales," and, "I've been through my
share"--from various points of vantage around the speaker.

It was then that Mrs. Jett sat forward on the edge of the straight
chair, and put her question.

There was a pause after it had fallen into the silence, as if an
intruder had poked her head in through the door, and it brought only the
most negligible answer from Mrs. Peopping.

"Forty-three."

Almost immediately Mrs. Dang caught at the pause for a case in point
that had been trembling on her lips all during Mrs. Peopping's recital.

"A doctor once told a second cousin of my sister-in-law's--" and so on
_ad infinitum, ad lib._, and _ad nauseaum_.

That night