“Looks just like a battleship trying to be cute,” whispered Hilda. Mimi rewarded her with a spontaneous but subdued little laugh as they followed Mrs. Hunter into the dining-room.
As they sat at the table near the huge bay window Hilda told Mimi in whispers about the women who chattered and ate at the large table.
“That skinny one over there,” pointing to the woman who had been telling of the ejection of Hilda’s mother from the theatre, “is Mrs. Watkins. Her husband’s a doctor and he was crazy about mamma but she didn’t like him like she did daddy. They say,” and here Hilda leaned across the table and whispered, “that Dr. Watkins is still in love with mamma and it makes Mrs. Watkins furious. She doesn’t like mamma and the main reason, I think, is because mamma is so much better-looking and knows so much more.”
Mimi wriggled ecstatically at this revelation. She felt the delicious sense of being a conspirator, as the repository of a secret told only to one very dear and close.
“That one with the gold tooth who laughs all the time is the wife of a schoolteacher—her name’s Mrs. Tompkins—she’s been to New York twice—but it didn’t seem to do her any good. She laughs as much as ever and hasn’t anything new to talk about except the new clothes she’s bought and how she and her husband could go to all the shows in New York and sit in any part of the theatre they wanted to.”
Mimi, as discreetly as she could, turned and surveyed her of the gold tooth. She was not very impressed—she expected anyone who had twice been to New York to have some distinguishing mark or characteristic which revealed two journeys to Manhattan. Mimi did not know what form this mark should have taken, she only felt that Mrs. Tompkins should have differed in some way from those who had not journeyed so far.