Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/239



“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Carolyn answered carelessly. “I suppose not. Though plenty of children do, you know. Mrs. Ranger’s little girl always calls her mother Lou.”

“Mrs. Ranger—you mean the woman that smokes?”

Miss Trueman’s tone brought vividly to the mind a person dangling from disgusted finger-tips a mouse or beetle.

“For heaven’s sake, Aunt Jule”—in moments of intense exasperation they reverted unconsciously to the old form—“don’t speak of her as if she smoked for a living!”

“I should rather not speak of her at all,” said Miss Trueman severely.

They raised their eyebrows helplessly: Carolyn’s irritation was so unfeigned that she omitted a justly famous shrug.

For two years they had devoted an appreciable part of their busy hours to modifying Aunt Julia’s antique prejudices, developing in her the latent æsthetic