Then from a tray she selected a thick
black cigar, and placidly bit off the end and lighted it, and then
settled back at her ease, and proceeded to tell Montague about New
York, and about the great families who ruled it, and where and how
they had got their money, and who were their allies and who their
enemies, and what particular skeletons were hidden in each of their
closets.
It was worth coming a long way to listen to Mrs. Billy tete-a-tete;
her thoughts were vigorous, and her imagery was picturesque. She
spoke of old Dan Waterman, and described him as a wild boar rooting
chestnuts. He was all right, she said, if you didn't come under his
tree. And Montague asked, "Which is his tree?" and she answered,
"Any one he happens to be under at the time."
And then she came to the Waitings. Mrs. Billy had been in on the
inside of that family, and there was nothing she didn't know about
it; and she brought the members up, one by one, and dissected them,
and exhibited them for Montague's benefit. They were typical
bourgeois people, she said.
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