Jane, dear, I wonder
what's become of Laura, little Laura: she was always so naughty and
difficult to manage, so different from Martha--and the rest.
LAURA. Lor', Julia! Is it as bad as that? Mother, 'little Laura' is here,
sitting in front of you. Don't you know me?
MRS. R. Do you remember, Jane, one day when we'd all started for a walk,
Laura had forgotten to bring her gloves, and I sent her back for them? And
on the way she met little Dorothy Jones, and she took her gloves off her,
and came back with them just as if they were her own.
LAURA. What a good memory you have, Mother! I remember it too. She was an
odious little thing, that Dorothy--always so whiney-piney.
JULIA. More tea, Laura?
(_Laura pushes her cup at her without remark, for she has been kept
waiting; then, in loud tones, to suit the one whom she presumes to be
rather deaf_:)
LAURA. Mother! Where are you living now?
MRS. R. I'm living, my dear.
LAURA. I said 'where?'
JULIA. We live where it suits us, Laura.
LAURA. Julia, I wasn't addressing myself to you. Mother, where _are_
you living?... Why, _where_ has she gone to?
(_For now we perceive that this gentle Old Lady so devious in her
conversation has a power of self-possession, of which, very retiringly,
she avails herself._)
JULIA (_improving the occasion, as she hands back the cup, with that
touch of superiority so exasperating to a near relative_). Now you see!
If you press her too much, she goes.
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