The mail.
The Petticoats rarely received mail. It wasn't done much in Butterfly
Center. So unaesthetic.
On a tray, a lacquered lackey brought a letter to Warble.
A white letter. Large and square--ominously square.
Warble took tray and all and went with it to Petticoat's rooms--the
letter was addressed to him.
She tapped but there was no answer. Listening at the door, she could
hear him splashing in his rock-hewn bath and leaping, chamois-like, from
crag to crag of his quarried bathroom.
She sat down on the floor and waited. Petticoat's toilets were like
linked sweetness, long drawn out.
It was late afternon, before he emerged, fresh, roseate and smiling,
and imprinted a kiss on Warble's cheek that left the red stamp of a
lip-sticked mouth. Warble sometimes thought if it could be arranged as a
dating stamp, she could keep a record of when he had last kissed her.
Poor little Warble--she loved her Big Bill so fondly, and he only looked
on her as something fatter than his dog, a little bigger than his cat.
Timidly she proffered the trayed letter.
“Oh, my Heavens!” and Petticoat smote himself, hip and thigh. “Where
did you get this? Why was I not told sooner of its arrival? To me! And
postmarked Lake Skoodoow-abskoosis! Home of my ancestors! Woman! Why
this delay? _Why_?”
“It came this morning,” said Warble, apologetically, “but you were in
your bath, and the door was locked.”
“But this is a most important letter. Why didn't you slip it under the
door?”
“I couldn't,” said Warble, simply, “it was on a tray.”
“As I hoped--I mean, feared--” exclaimed Petticoat, tearing the envelope
from the sheet, “he is dead!”
It made Warble writhe to see the devastated envelope--she always slit
them neatly with a paper-knife--but she was thrilled by Petticoat's
excitement.
“A fortune!” he exclaimed. “My revered ancestor, the oldest of the
Cotton-Petticoats, has died and left all his wealth to me! A windfall!
Now we can afford to have a baby and get over the Moorish Courtyard,
too! Oh, Warble, ain't we got fun!”
He danced about the room, in his blue burnous and red tarbush, looking
more like a howling dervish than a tempestuous Petticoat.
Warble thought a minute. A baby would be nice--and perhaps she could
reform that more easily than she could older people.
“All right,” she said, “and I'll have beautiful gaternity mowns
of shuffy fliffon--I mean, fliffy shuffon, no--shiffy fluffon--oh,
pleathe--pleathe--”
Warble's tongue always misbehaved when she was excited or embarrassed,
but Petticoat didn't notice her.
“I can send Roscoe Rococo after that Courtyard,” he mused, “he'll know.
The last man I sent to Spain for a casemented façade, brought home a
temple! But Roscie knows, and he'll do it proper. I don't want to run
over just now--”
* * * * *
The baby was coming.
Warble reveled in infant layettes and her own layouts for lying in. She
sank deeper and deeper in a sea of baby-clothes, down pillows and orris
powder. Nursery quarters were added to the house, influenced by Lucca
Delia Robbia and Fra Angelico.
Also a few influential Madonnas.
* * * * *
The Butterflies came in with advice. Marigold Leathersham was dubious
about the wisdom of the plan, but brought a pillow of antique rose
point, filled with ostrich plumes.
Mrs. Holm Boddy rushed over with a copy of _Poems Every Expectant Mother
Ought to Know_, and Lotta Munn sent a card of diamond safety pins.
Iva Payne, the hateful thing, sent a Cubist picture of an infant falling
downstairs, but Warble couldn't make it out so its pre-natal influence
didn't amount to much.
Daisy Snow, innocent child, sent a beautiful edition of _How to Tell
Your Young_, a treatise of the bird-and-bee-seed-and-pollen school, and
Faith Loveman sent her own marked copy of _Cooks that Have Helped Me_.
But Warble made a face at them all, and gave their books to the
Salvation Army and read the Diary of Maggot Somebody.
* * * * *
Another fate slather.
The baby was twins.
That was the way things came to Warble--fate in big chunks--destiny in
cloudbursts.
Two little red Petticoats all at once to hang on the ancestral tree.
But Warble was not caught napping. In her efficient way, she had
provided two bassinets, two nurseries--in fact, she had really provided
three of everything, but the third wasn't needed, and she thriftily
ordered it put aside for the present and for the future.
Dr. Petticoat was enchanted.
He saw the children first, asleep in their downy nests, tucked in by
the skilled hands of the staff of trained nurses, and as he gazed on
his offspring, his little tucked and quilted Petticoats, he named them
Guelph and Ghibelline, after two of his illustrious ancestors and ran
off at once to put up their names at various select and inaccessible
clubs.