Page:The Smart Set (Volume 1).djvu/412

80 ELDERLY LADY

"Yes, my child. I shall always wear it."

LITTLE GIRL

"I wouldn't, then. Aunt Molly only wore black a year for Uncle Minus, and now she has got another."

ELDERLY LADY

"Your Aunt Molly was a very young woman, and—" (Pause.)

LITTLE GIRL

"Can widows have children?"

ELDERLY LADY

!

LITTLE GIRL

"You have got six."

ELDERLY LADY

"They are all grown up and married."

LITTLE GIRI

"Are they girls?"

ELDERLY LADY

"Four girls and two sons."

LITTLE GIRL

"Are the girls pretty?"

ELDERLY LADY

"I think them so.”

LITTLE GIRL

"Have they got children? Are they brides? I have always noticed brides have a baby."

ELDERLY LADY (laughing)

"Yes; I have grandchildren to love."

LITTLE GIRL

"I heard mamma saying the other day to Mr. Lawrence she wouldn't mind being a widow one bit: it was a pleasant position. That's what my ma said."

ELDERLY LADY

"Your mamma must have been joking."

LITYLE GIRL (doubtfully)

"I don't know."

ELDERLY LADY

"Are you going to the dance at the Lawrences'?"

LITTLE GIRL

"Sister May is. I'm too young."

ELDERLY LADY

"I thought children were to open the ball."

LITTLE GIRL

"Not as little as I am. Sister May always gets everything."

ELDERLY LADY

"She's grown up nearly, isn't she?"

LITTLE GIRL

"She's sixteen. She's got a bicycle."

ELDERLY LADY

"Most dangerous things! Do you want one, too?"

LITTLE GIRL

"I am dying for one. Do you ride?"

ELDERLY LADY

"Why, my child, what a question!"

LITTLE GIRL

"I should think you would want to."

ELDERLY LADY

"One doesn't want to do such things when one is old."

LITTLE GIRL

"I wish I did not want to do things."

FLDERLY LADY

"But that would be unnatural. Age has few desires; that is one of its compensations."

LITTLE GIRL

"Oh, what is that, comp?"

ELDERLY LADY (gravely)

"When one wants to do things very much, and can't, that is suffering; when one doesn't want to do them, there is no pain in being disappointed. Do you see?"

LITTLE GIRL

"Well, I am just suffering for a bicycle."