I am quite the oldest inhabitant. Three mergers and a complete rebuilding, but they didn’t get rid of me!”

“Tell how you went out by daylight, dear Mrs. Vanderpant, and nearly got bought for Whistler’s Mother.”

“That was in pre-war days. I was more robust then. But at the cash desk they suddenly remembered there was no frame. And when they came back to look at me — ”

“ — She was gone.”

Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.

“Where is Ella? Where is my broth?”

“She is bringing it, Mrs. Vanderpant. It will come.”

“Tiresome little creature! She is our foundling, Mr. Snell. She is not quite our sort.”

“Is that so, Mrs. Vanderpant? Dear, dear!”

“I lived alone here, Mr. Snell, for many years. I took refuge here in the terrible times in the eighties. I was a young girl then, a beauty, people were kind enough to say, but poor Papa lost his money. Bracey’s meant a lot to a young girl, in the New York of those days, Mr. Snell. It seemed to me terrible that I should not be able to come here in the ordinary way. So I came here for good. I was quite alarmed when others began to come in, after the crash of 1907. But it was the dear Judge, the Colonel, Mrs. Bilbee — ”

I bowed. I was being introduced.

“Mrs. Bilbee writes plays. And of a very old Philadelphia family. You will find us quite nice here, Mr. Snell.”

“I feel it a great privilege, Mrs. Vanderpant.”

“And, of course, all our dear young people came in ’29. Their poor papas jumped from skyscrapers.”

I did a great deal of bowing and whistling. The introductions took a long time. Who would have thought so many people lived in Bracey’s?

“And here at last is Ella with my broth.”

It was then I noticed that the young people were not so young, after all, in spite of their smiles, their little ways, their ingénue dress.