I had to drink a cup of tea with them and eat some little spiced cookies before I could get them to listen to a question. Then Mrs. Quarre made little sympathetic clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth, while I told about the elderly lady who had fallen off a street car. The old man rumbled in his beard that it was “a damn shame,” and gave me a fat and oily cigar. I had to assure them that the fictitious elderly lady was being taken care of and was coming along nicely—I was afraid they were going to insist upon being taken to see her.
Finally I got away from the accident itself, and described the man I wanted. “Thomas,” Mrs. Quarre said; “isn’t that the young man who lives in the house with the railing—the one who always looks so worried?”
The old man stroked his snowy beard and pondered.
“But, my dear,” he rumbled at last; “hasn’t he got dark hair?”
She beamed upon her husband and then upon me.
“Thomas is so observant,” she said with pride. “I had forgotten; but the young man I spoke of does have dark hair, so he couldn’t be the one who saw the accident at all.”
The old man then suggested that one who lived in the block below might be my man. They discussed this one at some length before they decided that he was too tall and too old. Mrs. Quarre suggested another. They discussed that one, and voted against him. Thomas offered a candidate; he was weighed and discarded. They chattered on:
“But don’t you think, Thomas … Yes, my dear, but … Of course you’re right, Thomas, but. …”
Two old folks enjoying a chance contact with the world that they had dropped out of.