Fliss, opening her eyes reluctantly, found them resting on a fat gray
roll of dust under her bureau. It made her uncomfortable and
discouraged. She closed her eyes and shifted her position in bed, but
waking on the other side was just as bad. Her window curtain hung
saggily in soiled folds to greet her. She hated to see such things, not
that they aroused in her any ambition to remedy the particular phases of
slack housekeeping and tawdry living, but they emphasized her dislike of
her home and all that surrounded it. She thought it utterly unjust that
she should have to live in such an environment when there were so many
girls her own age awaking to pleasant, clean, beautifully furnished
rooms, and her ambition was not to reform the things about her but to
discard them as quickly as possible. In this revealing morning hour
Fliss usually faced her problems. There was no occasion for bluff since
she was alone and her background gave her no advantages. Last night at
one of the club cotillions she had worn a yellow malines scarf about her
head and yellow satin slippers and never for a moment lost her rôle of
gayety incarnate. This morning the yellow slippers poked their toes out
from under a chair, streaks on them showing only too plainly that they
had been dyed and the yellow scarf lay abandoned on her bureau, its
charm and crispness gone forever. Her mood matched her wrecked finery.
The crispness and charm had gone out of her too.
For nearly a year and a half now she had been out of school, searching
in her vague, unskilled way for a chance to establish herself more
securely and comfortably. A year and a half might not be long for a
débutante, but Fliss knew that she could not take her own time. It was
hard enough now to maintain her place, such as it was, without letting
people tire of her. Also the time had sharpened her sense of values. She
was not yet quite sure of what she wanted, but she knew most definitely
what she did not want. Marriage for the sake of marriage had not the
least appeal for her. She knew too much about the sordid parts of
domesticity for that. There were too many girls who had a brief career
of local popularity and were now wheeling baby carriages and making over
last year’s hats; too many young men who, unmarried, had danced and
flirted their gay way through society only to become preoccupied,
somewhat shabby, hard-working flat-dwellers after their marriage. Fliss
had no intention of making any blunder which would land her in such an
existence. She was nice to all men. That was because it was wise, lest
they become malicious, and because it kept her in practice. But she was
more chary with her kisses than she had been in High School and she had
learned many new ways of getting without giving.
She had learned too how to take snubs with considerable grace; not
humbling herself too much, but rather ignoring them, pretending not to
see what for the sake of her scrap of dignity she could not afford to
see. But she did see. It was one thing to be a popular girl in High
School, to hold the record for the number of invitations to dances, to
be the best dancer and the most sought after girl--and another to be
left when the school circles broke up and resolved into the social
groups to which their families belonged, to be a girl without family
backing or a college education, who was determined not to be “dropped.”
There were many parents who had found Fliss an attractive little girl,
but now saw no reason to include her in their parties for their
daughters. Their daughters were young women with futures to be planned
for, who must take their places in the community, and Fliss was a social
anomaly, pretty but nondescript. People were less cruel, of course, than
forgetful. Fliss “didn’t occur to them.” They were full of interests in
which she could not share for lack of money, for lack of direction and
chaperonage.
Working, as an alternative to marriage, was quite as distasteful to
Fliss. She felt that working, especially at the things she could do,
would put her definitely in the wrong class and out of the reach of the
people to whom she pinned her ambitions. She preferred to be classless
rather than to be in the wrong class. To her idleness her parents did
not really object. Mr. Horton had little enough to give his wife and
daughter, but he expected to give them what he had and to live in
shabbiness and self-denial himself. He had suggested once that Fliss
learn stenography, but at her scornful protest had dropped the matter,
assuming that he did not, as Fliss said, “understand.” The suggestion
had been made merely because he felt that Fliss must have time heavy on
her hands, and not that he had any theory about her being a wage earner.
Like millions of men of all grades of strength and success, he expected
to be eternally liable for the women he accumulated in his family, and
to be subject to them. Mrs. Horton had educated him in domestic life. He
took it mildly as a blend of disorderly bedroom, where his possessions
were crowded into the smallest possible space by an array of
unattractive feminine things over which inevitably hung the smell of
face powder, thick and sweet, a dining room in which food and service
were inferior to his quick lunch place and a living-room in which he
might sit unmolested, unless Fliss or his wife wanted him out of it,
which often happened. When they did, he went to the moving picture house
on the corner and saw the program through twice.
It was hard for Fliss to find the slightest interest in her parents. She
might have been thrown with them casually, instead of sharing one of the
closest of ties. Perhaps it was equally hard on the parents to be even
semi-responsible--responsible as far as she wished to allow--for a bit
of cold, hard brilliance like Fliss, whom their easy-going philosophy
could never hope to comprehend. Mr. Horton would have been satisfied
with the most commonplace of sons-in-law and Mrs. Horton delighted
merely to have Fliss attain the vague dignity of marriage. How was it
possible for them to imagine the scheming and plotting, the steps and
retreats which filled the mind of their daughter? She did not bother to
tell them about her status with different men--even when the men asked
her to marry them. She had had three proposals in this year and a half.
One was from a handsome young man who worked in a broker’s office in the
daytime and danced and flirted in the evenings with as much abandon as
did Fliss. She gave little thought to his offer. The frivolity which had
stood him in such good stead as a companion on many an evening was
absolutely against him as a candidate for husbandhood. And added to this
was the fact that he was an unknown young man who came from another
city, presumably from obscurity, and without money.
The second offer was a curious one, made half in jest and half in
earnest by one of the city’s wealthiest and most dissipated young men.
He was a young man whom Fliss might have handled to advantage had she
taken his laughing proposal seriously, but she did not choose to take it
so. She merely laughed at him, shrewdly gauging behind her mirth the
difficulty of living with dissipation even if it were guarded by
wealth. Fliss was in pursuit of solidity. That she might have found in
some measure in the repeated boyish offers of Gordon, her High School
companion. Gordon’s position was unassailable and in each college
vacation he followed Fliss about with a devotion which was unremitting
and should have been touching to her. He wanted to leave college and
marry her--wanted to run away with her--but she held him off too, not
quite so definitely as the others. There was a good chance that Gordon
would always be useful to her. But he was very young and entirely
dependent on his parents.
What Fliss was anxious for now was some definite opportunity to present
itself. She was vaguely conscious that her technique was fairly perfect,
but that she must have something to work on soon. The roll of dust, more
obnoxious every morning, the torn window curtain, the dyed slippers,
and, most of all, the sound of her mother’s voice in the other room,
engaged in some interminable conversation over the telephone, filled her
with an almost unbearable desire to do something about her situation
soon.
The voice ceased, the receiver clicked and she heard her mother’s
footsteps turned towards her room.
“Not up yet, Flissy?” Her mother came in a little apologetically. “I
suppose you are tired after last night I heard you come in and then the
cuckoo struck two. That’s pretty late.”
“I can’t very well come home by myself, can I? I’ve got to stay until
things are over whether I like it or not. There’s no limousine waiting
my orders every night.”
Her mother did not take up the point. She moved heavily about the room,
picking up the strewn finery of the night before, settling things into a
kind of order.
“Would you like a cup of coffee in bed? I can heat it up in a minute.”
Fliss yawned. “No, I’ll get up. I’d sooner eat anywhere than in this
room. I should think father could make that landlord decorate these
rooms. They’re like a slum.”
“They won’t do a thing for you. Rents are terrible and they just tell
you to take them or leave them. Mrs. Nesbit is looking for a flat and
she said----”
“I can repeat what she said without hearing it,” interrupted Fliss, not
without a glint of humor. “Come have some coffee with me, mother.” She
had an occasional lazy affection for her mother when she was not too
much irritated by her. Also she was company when there was no one else.
Mrs. Horton poured the coffee and set it on the edge of the
near-mahogany dining table, while Fliss hung languidly over the gas
stove making toast. She was an untidy little figure now--negligee
trailing, hair straggling, but her eyes, deep and soft from sleep, made
up for the rest of her unattractiveness. They sat down and emptied the
coffee-pot, cup after cup, a kind of lazy planlessness about them which
was characteristic of their usual mornings. But Mrs. Horton roused
herself into attempted action sooner than she usually did.
“I suppose you’ve forgotten, haven’t you, that the bridge club meets
here to-day, Fliss?”
“Lord, mother, not those terrible women again!”
“Don’t talk so, Fliss. They’re all nice women. Just as good as we are.”
“Well, I shan’t be here.”
“Now, please, Fliss. You know how they talk. If you aren’t here they’ll
think it’s awfully funny. I don’t care about your being here all the
time, but to help with the refreshments anyway. There’s no one who can
serve them as you do.”
“You know how I hate that crowd. Sitting around retailing gossip about
women who wouldn’t know them on the street. Backstairs stuff! Oh, why
don’t you drop them?”
“Now, you mustn’t be so snobby, Fliss. I’ve known these women for years.
Mrs. Ellis----”
“Don’t tell me again that Mrs. Ellis assisted at my birth. Maybe that’s
one thing that’s wrong with me.”
“You’ll stay in and help me, won’t you, dear?”
“Washing dishes all afternoon?”
“No, you won’t have to do that sort of thing. I’ve called up Ellen and
she will come in at three to help. She’s working now but she asked for
an afternoon off.”
“Ellen,” echoed Fliss with deeper gloom.
“Ellen’s a nice girl,” said her mother with an unusually defensive note.
“Of course she’s nice. She’s a lot nicer than the members of your club.
But it is tough to have a cousin who’s a servant.”
“What else can the poor girl do? She has to earn her living and she
can’t choose. She gets much better money than she would clerking.”
“I suppose.”
Ellen was a sore point. She was a cousin of Mrs. Horton’s who had been
brought up on her father’s farm and been a person of some consequence in
the farming district. Her father had died and Ellen had sold the farm,
finding it heavily weighted with mortgages, and come to the city to
work. She knew how to do housework and housework suited her, so she went
into service quite simply and without feeling herself depreciated in the
least. The aggressiveness of the city servant had been left out of her,
and while she did not feel herself at all the equal in position of the
ladies she worked for, she had no feeling of common interest with the
city servant class, so slavishly imitating their mistresses, so insolent
of manner and cheap of ideal. Ellen chose her employers with discretion,
and always managed to pick ladies. She treated them not as if they were
above her, but merely as if they were engaged on a different sort of
job, social as well as economic, and in so doing solved the servant
problem in her own small way. But she was an unavoidable cause of
suffering to Fliss. Every time she came to see the Hortons--and they
could not help being glad to see her, for she brought not only presents
to Fliss, but an atmosphere of comfort and devotion into that chaotic
apartment--she was a torturing reminder to Fliss that her own social
position was founded on nothing and that she ate at the table with a
person who served at the tables at which she wished to sit. But she
somehow did not say anything to Ellen about the way she felt. There was
a quiet dignity about the farm girl as well as a generosity that kept
Fliss’s complainings in check.
Another thing was that Ellen always had ready money. She was extremely
well paid, spent very little on herself and was always ready to finance
some small extravagance for Fliss. The Hortons never had enough ready
money and it was a satisfaction to Fliss to possess a blouse or an
expensive pair of gloves which were really paid for before she wore
them. There was physical comfort, even if mental rancor, in being a
cousin of Ellen’s.
Mrs. Horton was bringing out that very point now. “Ellen said she’d stop
at Scott’s and get some cream cheese and we can have brown bread
sandwiches with the salad and coffee. And she said if she bought a
lobster there would be lots of time to cook that after she got here. She
works so fast and they are sure to play until five, anyway. Coffee,
salad, brown bread sandwiches and cake, and your father can just piece
on what’s left over, when he comes home.”
The telephone interrupted them. Fliss answered it in the omnipresent
hope of something interesting, and it seemed to galvanize her drooping
spirits. As if it were necessary to touch up her appearance in order to
get her spirits into action, at the first words she heard she twisted
back her hair and drew her negligee around her with her free hand. Her
face, so listless a moment before, began to sparkle--to live again--and
her voice changed from its discouraged tone into one which fairly sang
with interest and desire to please and to coquet.
“Of course you didn’t get me out of bed--no, not tired at all, thought
it was fun--I’m glad you liked to dance with me--so do I--I’d love to.
What do you suggest?--The music there is good, but the food really too
terrible--why I think so, who else is going?--to-morrow night, then,
about eight-thirty--yes, you can find it easily enough if you can read
numbers. We’re flat dwellers, you know--cliff dwellers, you might
say--208 Gladstone Street, Flat H. That’s three flights up--if you groan
I’ll meet you with a glass of water--all right--good-by.”
Smiling still, clinging to the atmosphere of jocularity, Fliss hung up
the receiver. Her mother watched her without questioning. It was curious
that there was not any of the eager curiosity in her face which animates
most women in contemplation of their daughter’s flirtations. Mrs. Horton
had been well trained to keep out of things. Perhaps she felt that even
her daughter’s successful marriage would mean nothing to her. She would
be organized and managed through the proper things to do, but there
would be no confidence, no dependence. So she waited for Fliss to speak.
Fliss did, though more in reflection than as if anxious to produce any
effect on her listener. “Funny--I didn’t know he was at all taken with
me. I only met him last night. Mother, I’ve simply got to have that red
georgette mended before to-morrow night. I haven’t a rag to wear and
maybe if that were fixed up a little--it isn’t dressy at the Palladium
and with my black hat I could make the georgette do.”
“Maybe Ellen can do it for you to-night before she goes.”
“I’ll ask her. The sleeves ought to be shorter too, you know. Maybe she
could cut them and I’ll help her with the sandwiches if she does and
wipe the dishes for her.”
They seemed to forget that Ellen’s labors at Mrs. Horton’s party were
given as favors. Mrs. Horton’s face had brightened at her daughter’s new
tone of co-operation. She even ventured a question and was answered
without rebuff.
“Who was it, Flissy?”
“Why, it was Matthew Allenby. You wouldn’t know, mother, but he is the
hardest man in town to get to notice you. He’s not a boy, you know. The
man must be nearly forty and a bachelor. I’d never met him till last
night; Owen introduced him and we had three dances. He dances horribly
and is perfectly crazy about it. He’s a mining man--scads of money--and
lives alone somewhere. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if----”
She was really rather pathetic and almost sweet as she fell into her
dream, mercenary as it was, for she wanted only things of beauty and she
had no cruelty developed in her yet--no deliberate cruelty; unconscious
disregard of other people perhaps was the worst of her. She sat dreaming
her dream of advancement as most girls of her age dream of love and she
did love the things of which she dreamt.
“Come, Fliss, please dress. It’s getting on towards noon and I want to
clear this room out.”
Fliss went her way to her room and thence to the little bathroom, where
she lay in the tub, from which the enamel was peeling, and wondered just
how she would handle Matthew Allenby. Then she dressed for the bridge
party, for it was after noon and she knew that her mother’s guests
arrived early and stayed late. Her oldest afternoon dress served for
them, but with her black fringe of hair setting off the softness and
whiteness of her skin, she was so pretty even in her old dress that her
mother, bustling into corsets in the next room--she and Fliss always
omitted lunch if possible--looked at her with an expression of pride. It
meant a good deal to show off Fliss to her friends. She had so little
chance.
“But don’t expect me to fill in at a bridge table if any of the old
prize-hunting harpies don’t come, because I won’t. I’m going to talk to
Ellen and plan the best way to fix over my georgette. By the way, where
is Ellen working, now that the Grangers have gone to California?”
Her mother did not know. She knew that Ellen had just taken a new place.
Ellen arrived a little later. She came in heavily burdened with brown
packages and bags, having added to the cream cheese and lobster an extra
fresh head of lettuce and a small steak for Mr. Horton, so that he
wouldn’t “have to eat all that sweet stuff that men hate.” That was like
Ellen and they were rare days for Mr. Horton when she came. Broiled
steak for him, who was used to a thin sirloin, pounded and fried. Ellen
deposited her packages on the kitchen table and looked with admiration
at her young cousin.
“My, but that’s a pretty dress, Fliss.”
“This old thing? Just fit for the ragbag.”
Ellen herself was not a person to be ashamed of as far as appearance
went. She had no variety in her clothes, but her neat dark blue suit was
well-pressed and well-fitted (by Ellen herself). She was quite tall and
pleasant-faced, her complexion a trifle steamed into floridness by much
cooking, but her hands were as soft and well-kept as those of Fliss.
Ellen had her few prides, and her hands were one of them. Seen on the
street she looked like a pleasant, middle-class young matron. In markets
and shops where she was not known she was invariably called “Mrs.,” the
obvious domestic capability in her manner bringing forth that title. The
tradespeople always liked to deal with her. She knew what to buy and
permitted no extortions or frauds, but she was friendly and
uncomplaining and businesslike.
Going about the kitchen of the flat she made a new place of it. It
became a hospitable place, a pleasant workshop, with the lobster
unwrapped and lying on a platter, the mayonnaise quickly beaten to
yellow smoothness, the sandwiches beginning to pile up on two plates and
Ellen herself bustling about, but lending an ear of interest to the tale
of the red georgette.
“What you want to do with those sleeves, Fliss, is to slit them and then
hemstitch them around the corners. I’ll turn them up this evening, slit
them and to-morrow all you’ll have to do is to take them into the
hemstitching shop down on Third Street and they’ll finish it for you.
They won’t charge more than a quarter for that, though if I were you I’d
rip off the lace yoke and we’ll turn that in and run a couple of lines
of hemstitching around there and then, with that little organdy collar
you wear on your velveteen, it’ll look like a new dress.”
Fliss beamed. She knew that it would look like a new dress. She sat on
the edge of the shelf, swinging her feet and really admiring Ellen. She
liked Ellen’s lack of pose too, just as she liked the lack of pose in
Cecily. It was so glorious not to have to pose or pretend. Meanwhile the
little girl in her, the really often undernourished girl, was vastly
enjoying the sandwiches which Ellen pressed upon her now and then.
“Where are you now, Ellen?”
“Nicest place I’ve ever been. I didn’t mean to take any more general
work--just cooking--but I was asked specially to go to this place by
Mrs. Granger and I like it. Just a bride and groom. Such a nice young
couple and she is lovely to me. Helps me with the work wherever she can
and so considerate.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mrs. Richard Harrison. Do you know her?”
Fliss had a funny little sinking feeling. “Yes--a little--oh, yes.”
“I thought you would probably. She’s very young--not more than your age
I should say. Now, Fliss,” she caught a fleeting look on her cousin’s
face, “I’ll not do anything that is going to make you feel bad.”
“Oh, Ellen, I don’t mean----”
“I know, Fliss--you don’t want to hurt me. You can’t help feeling a
little though that you don’t like to have me work for your friends, me
being your cousin and all, but you needn’t fuss. No one is going to know
I’m your cousin unless you tell them. I decided that long ago.”
Ellen had never been so frank or so expansive and Fliss felt a little
ashamed, but somehow vastly relieved. She shifted the blame for her
snobbery.
“People are such fools, Ellen.”
“I know.”
With her fears laid to rest, Fliss began to get a glimpse of a silver
lining. It wouldn’t be so bad to have Ellen at Cecily’s. She could get
information about what Cecily liked, whom she entertained, and learn
how to strengthen her friendship with Cecily.
“She must have lovely things,” she began.
“It’s a beautiful house and the best of everything in it. And how Mrs.
Harrison does love it! She takes good care of things too, and she won’t
let you be extravagant, not that I’d want to. She was brought up in a
convent, you know, and she’s neat as wax.”
This to Fliss was irrelevant.
“Is she crazy about her husband?”
But there she blundered. A reticence came over Ellen’s whole manner.
Admitted though she might be to the sight of her employer’s feelings, it
was not in Ellen to gossip about them. She was willing to tell Fliss
about the pattern of Cecily’s silver and the drawn-work in her lunch
cloths, but what she saw of Cecily’s emotions was revealed to her in a
kind of unconscious confidence and Ellen was incapable of betraying it.
“Of course,” she said shortly, and there was no way of expanding the
point. For the second time Fliss felt a little ashamed. She took another
sandwich and was silent.
Mrs. Horton’s guests began to arrive and Fliss had to greet them before
they took their places at the four bridge tables crowded together in the
living-room. They were middle-aged ladies in silk dresses, who took
their hats off in Mrs. Horton’s bedroom, used her face powder profusely
and then settled down to a game of bridge which was surprisingly
cut-throat. On the mantel two packages wrapped in tissue paper
stimulated them immensely. Not that the prize--possibly a brass-plated
candlestick or a pair of stockings--(silk to the knee)--was of any great
value, but the idea of getting something for nothing enthralled them.
Their faces grew shrewd and their glances at their opponents inimical;
and the table bell which rang now and then as the signal to move from
one table to the next was also the signal for a burst of discussion,
commiseration and congratulation. Fliss knew them all. Most of them
belonged to the district in town holding the brown house whence she had
persuaded her parents to move, and she had no good word for them. They
were good ladies, addicted to boudoir caps in the morning, who liked to
gossip and did it generously. But they were kindly enough, good to their
families and on the whole unambitious and satisfied. And for this last
quality it was hardest for Fliss to tolerate them. They were so settled;
they did not recognize Fliss as a person of ambition, calling her Flissy
and speaking about her age, her hair, her dress; comparing her to Clara
or Jessie whom Fliss had known in grammar school and who now were
stenographers or department store clerks. If they had stood a little in
awe of Fliss she would have been much more kindly. But to them she was
just “pretty little Flissy Horton” and she knew it.
Her limited cordiality having no effect at all on the matronly
conversation, she fled again to the kitchen and took refuge with Ellen,
who was already busy with the red georgette dress. Fliss put it on to
demonstrate its lacks and possibilities and became, with the donning of
it, a curiously unsuitable figure to mix with pots and pans, melted
butter and lobster. Fliss was decorative and stimulating enough to be
out of place in the midst of mere utilities.
“My, how I hate that gang in there,” she said.
Ellen continued cutting deftly. “Why?”
“They’re so awfully cheap.”
“How do you mean? Clothes?”
“Clothes, of course, but I could stand that if they weren’t so cheap in
their ideas--if they had some ambition--if they weren’t so ghastly
self-satisfied. Look at them in there, playing cards all the blessed
afternoon for a silly, ugly painted plate.”
Fliss knew what was inside the tissue paper packages on the mantel.
“Most women play cards. All the women you admire so much have
bridge-luncheons.”
“I know, but they play for something worth while; give the proceeds to
charities.”
“I’ve seen them playing for money that they couldn’t afford to lose,”
answered Ellen.
“Well--even that. My goodness, it’s better to play for money--have real
stakes--than to get all worked up and hot and cross over silly cake
plates. Oh, I don’t know--the other women are so different, anyway, so
much more alive. This is sort of sordid.”
“Um----,” said Ellen noncommittally.
“If I thought,” went on Fliss, “that I would settle down and get like
those old harpies, I’d--well, I’d just want to die now,” finished Fliss,
with drama.
Ellen did not seem impressed.
“People are different, Fliss,” she said gravely. “They’re nice
women--these friends of your ma’s--even if they don’t seem very genteel.
And it’s been my experience that it’s best to take folks as you find
them.”
“I don’t want to take folks like this--at all. I just want to get away
from them.”
“So you do; but your ma likes them. They’re the people she knows best
and some of them have been awfully good to her. She was telling me how
Mrs. Ellis----”
“I know, Ellen. She probably enjoyed it, too. All those women think
about is babies and who’s going to have one next.”
Ellen flushed a little. “That’s awful talk, Fliss.”
“Awful! It’s all you hear. Honestly, I don’t know who’s worst--the
women in there or the girls I know. If you get shocked at a little thing
like that, you ought to hear the way the girls talk. Marjorie
Foster--she’s Marjorie Grant now--who was married last month had all the
girls in to tea the other day. And you should hear them talk! All about
their husbands--and babies--and such.”
The flush on Ellen’s face had risen to her very eyebrows.
“Well, you needn’t talk it to me, Fliss. I think it’s disgusting. I may
be country and all that, but I know what’s decent and I don’t think
girls who talk like that are.”
Fliss let it drop. She wondered what Ellen would have said if she could
have heard her airing her views at Marjorie Grant’s tea on the way she
meant to run marriage.
The crowning event of the afternoon approached--the presentation of the
prize--to be followed quickly, as if to forestall the disappointment of
the losers, by the “refreshments.” Fliss watched the lady with the
highest score receive the tissue paper package with anticipatory smiles
and giggling, untie the ribbon and hold the painted plate up for the
group to see. There was great admiration, a general close inspection.
The booby prize, a box of chocolates, was given and received with even
more merriment and the ladies settled back, ready for Fliss to proceed
with a folded napkin for each capacious lap. Fliss dropped them with a
careless little air of detachment that did not quite pretend to hauteur,
but approached it. She did not want to talk to them; serve them if she
must, but preserve her aloofness at all costs. But even that was not
left to her. It was the same Mrs. Ellis, no doubt with a kind of
proprietary interest in this slim, silk-clad girl, whom she had first
seen as a red little baby emerging into the world under difficulties,
who insisted on detaining her for an intimate bit of conversation.
“You’re getting to be quite a swell, aren’t you, Fliss? I see your name
in the papers all the time--running around to dances and all kinds of
didoes with real society folks. Must cost a lot to keep that up. How
does pa like footing the bills?”
Fliss flushed an angry red and stood, biting her lip. She had to stand
still because Mrs. Ellis had a friendly hold on her dress.
“Got your eye on some swell fellow, too, Flissy? No one’s going to be
too good for that girl I always said when you were growing up. I knew
you’d fly high.”
“Please, Mrs. Ellis.” Fliss detached her dress and marched away, but
Mrs. Ellis only laughed.
“Guess I was treading on somebody’s toes then,” she said to Mrs. Horton.
“Fliss always was touchy. Has she really got her eye on somebody?”
Her own eye on the kitchen door, Mrs. Horton answered with caution. “Oh,
Fliss has lots of beaux. Always has had, since she was a little thing,
you know.”
They turned the talk to the excellence of the salad dressing. But when
the cakes came in, Fliss did not reappear. It was Ellen who passed them.
“I won’t go in there again!” Fliss had declared. “Not for anything on
earth. No, I won’t, Ellen, I couldn’t stand it.”
She was on the point of tears and Ellen’s quick sympathy saw how
overwrought she was. So she passed the cakes herself. Fliss was grateful
enough to wipe the dishes, and as she and Ellen worked they heard the
voices of the departing guests raised in high cordiality to their
hostess and the door shutting on one after another.
Mrs. Horton came out, her face beaming. “Your salad was elegant, Ellen,
and they had a real nice time, though I must say I was surprised at Mrs.
Hyland’s getting the prize because she doesn’t play a very good game.
However, she said a cake plate was the thing of all things she wanted.
Where’d you go to, Fliss?”
“I couldn’t stand that old Mrs. Ellis.”
But Mrs. Horton was on the high tide of her big day and Fliss did not
greatly disturb her. “Oh, she meant all right. You mustn’t mind what old
friends say. Well, here’s your father.”
Mr. Horton came slowly into the kitchen and smiled at Ellen.
“Quite a party, eh?”
“And your supper will be late,” said Ellen, “but it won’t be long now.”
It was equally surprising to the three Hortons to have supper at all,
but Ellen cleared her kitchen of them--Mrs. Horton to change her garb,
Fliss to finish the red dress and Mr. Horton to read his paper while she
prepared the meal. Half an hour later they all sat down to supper as if
there had been no party--no left-over sandwiches, but hot rolls and meat
and coffee. It was curious to see how they all reacted to it, and as
they became better fed became also more definite personalities. Mrs.
Horton insisted on doing the fresh batch of dishes, her husband became
actually talkative on the subject of the railroad strike, even though no
one listened, and the sharp edge of Fliss’s manner softened perceptibly.
Ellen did not notice or reflect on what she had done. It was all of a
normal day’s work for her. But she kissed Fliss as she left and there
was a trace of pity in her eyes. Going back through the city, she
stopped at the gay windows to look at clothes displayed there that were
pretty like Fliss herself--gay like Fliss. As she looked, she sighed.
But when she approached the house of her employer her face took on a
look of satisfaction. There were lights in the living-room. Mr. and
Mrs. Harrison were back from their theater party, and as she went past
the long windows Ellen saw them--Cecily curled up in a big chair, her
evening coat thrown back, and Dick sitting on the arm of the chair
fondling his wife’s hair. It was a pretty picture--and pleasantly real.
Ellen wound her alarm clock and set her bread with great satisfaction.
She loved the convenient, pretty kitchen. As she mounted the back stairs
quietly, the lights in the living-room still burned.
“Did you have an awfully good time to-night?” Cecily was asking.
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes, except I’m always glad to get home. It doesn’t seem as if we had
much chance to be home these days.”
“No--three nights this week--and to-morrow night, I meant to tell you. I
told Mollie Heathcote that I was sure we could join them at the
Palladium.”
“Dick, why on earth? I was going to have the most heavenly evening
here.”
Dick looked perplexed. “Why, she wanted us and I knew we didn’t have
anything on and it didn’t occur to me to say no.”
Cecily sighed.
“The Palladium is rather fun, sometimes,” suggested Dick.
“I suppose it is, but--well, any place is fun where we can be together.”
“Of course, dear. I’ll call Mollie up, though, if you like and tell her
I forgot that we were to be busy.”
“No, don’t do that. Mollie’s a dear and I wouldn’t like to play a trick
on her. We’ll go.”
“You know we won’t be going about like this all our married life. Just
now we’re a novelty as a couple, but we’ll get to the slippered stage.
Especially----”
“Especially,” agreed Cecily, with a tender little laugh.
“And now,” said Dick, jumping off the chair, “as the good Lady Macbeth
said--to bed! And may the good days of domesticity thicken around us,
shutting out all ribald pleasure!”