And there happened to Mrs. Jett that queer juvenescence that sometimes comes to men and women in middle life.  She who had enjoyed no particular youth (her father had died in a ferryboat crash two weeks before her birth, and her mother three years after) came suddenly to acquire comeliness which her youth had never boasted.

The round-shouldered, long-cheeked girl had matured gingerly to rather sparse womanhood that now at forty relented back to a fulsome thirty.

Perhaps it was the tint of light out in her face, perhaps the splendor of the vision; but at any rate, in those precious months to come, Mrs. Jett came to look herself as she should have looked ten years back.

They were timid and really very beautiful together, she and Henry Jett.  He came to regard her as a vase of porcelain, and, in his ignorance, regarded the doctor’s mandates harsh; would not permit her to walk, but ordered a hansom cab every day from three to four, Mrs. Jett alternating punctiliously with each of the boarding-house ladies for driving companion.

Every noon, for her delectation at luncheon, he sent a boy from the store with a carton of her special favorites—­Blue Point oysters.  She suddenly liked them small because, as she put it, they went down easier, and he thought that charming.  Lynnhavens for mortals of tougher growth.

Long evenings they spent at names, exercising their pre-determination as to sex.  “Ann” was her choice, and he was all for canceling his preference for “Elizabeth,” until one morning she awakened to the white light of inspiration.

“I have it!  Why not Ann Elizabeth?”

“Great!” And whistled so through his shaving that his mouth was rayed with a dark sunburst of beard where the razor had not found surface.

They talked of housekeeping, reluctantly, it is true, because Mrs. Plush herself was fitting up, of hard-to-spare evenings, a basinette of pink and white.  They even talked of schools.

Then came the inevitable time when Mrs. Jett lost interest.  Quite out of a clear sky even the Blue Points were taboo, and instead of joining this or that card or sewing circle, there were long afternoons of stitching away alone, sometimes the smile out on her face, sometimes not.

“Em, is it all right with you?” Henry asked her once or twice, anxiously.

“Of course it is!  If I weren’t this way—­now—­it wouldn’t be natural.  You don’t understand.”

He didn’t, so could only be vaguely and futilely sorry.

Then one day something quite horrible, in a small way, happened to Mrs. Jett.  Sitting sewing, suddenly it seemed to her that through the very fluid of her eyeballs, as it were, floated a school of fish.  Small ones—­young smelts, perhaps—­with oval lips, fillips to their tails, and sides that glisted.

She laid down her bit of linen lawn, fingers to her lids as if to squeeze out their tiredness.  She was trembling from the unpleasantness, and for a frightened moment could not swallow.  Then she rose, shook out her skirts, and to be rid of the moment carried her sewing up to Mrs. Dang’s, where a euchre game was in session, and by a few adroit questions in between deals gained the reassurance that a nervous state in her “condition” was highly normal.