Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/69

68 and which is great sport, for it consists in exercising Boris and Andrei (huge white Russian wolfhounds) on the leash, in the fields that completely surround the high walls of the building where we live in what amounts to isolation.

“About five blocks away through the fields lies a little community called Meadowlawn. There are seven or eight solidly built-up blocks of brick and stucco houses, bounded on the side nearest us by a wide highway called Queens Boulevard. There are little stores along the boulevard, and the built-up streets run at right angles to this wider highway, which is much traveled by trucks and automobiles.

"Mr. Differdale took me to call on his mother and his married sister, the afternoon of the day that I arrived, and left me to lunch with them, as he wanted me to get in touch with everybody and everything in his neighborhood, so that I could satisfy myself about his standing. He did not need to do this, Auntie; I made up my mind to remain the moment I first laid eyes on him, and he told me afterward that he knew immediately that I was the one woman who could help him in his work, when he read my graduation thesis. He had managed to get hold of several essays by girls in my class, through the dean’s influence, and said that he had selected Vassar girls because he believes that Vassar sends out adventurous spirits from her halls!

"Mrs. Differdale and Mrs, Arnold do not at all resemble Mr. Differdale, who is invested with a kind of nobility of bearing, a dignity—well, it is something spiritual that you feel about him and that his mother and sister do not possess in the smallest degree. They are both of the earth, earthy; although I’m sure it would hurt their feelings immeasurably to think that anyone considered them other than intensely—well, I'll call it religious, as being apart from spiritual.

"Mrs. Differdale is tall and thin, with snappy black eyes and frizzed gray hair that she conceals under a soiled boudoir cap mornings when it’s in crimpers. She usually removes them before dinner at night, when she dons a silk dress and becomes a lady of leisure. I’ve found in talking with her that she is intolerant of people who think differently from herself, and very dictatorial in stating her opinions as settled facts. She has a curious nature that is really astonishing.

"Apropos of her curiosity, she has a trick of catching up a broom and rushing out to sweep the immaculately kept sidewalk on a moment’s notice, if any out-of-the-ordinary noise happens to reach her listening ear; and it would be a mighty small noise that didn’t, Aunt Sophie, I can assure you. During the two hours I was in her home that first afternoon, she questioned me on about every subject conceivable, but as I was not at all sure of my ground, I managed to evade most of her inquiries, especially those that concerned her son, about whose work she apparently knows quite nothing. She speaks of him with grudging admiration, chiefly because of the money he has made by his invention, it seemed to me.

"Her daughter, Aurora Arnold, is as much like the older woman as one pea is like another, except that she is younger. She has thin blond hair and pale blue eyes to which she tries to give an expression of sincerity and sympathy, although she didn’t affect me as being what she pretended, and evidently wanted me to believe her. Mr. Arnold works in some kind of machine shop, but she refers to him with a considerable air as a "professional" man. She used to be a kindergarten teacher and—well, you may remember that. I always disliked the idea of teaching because of that air of