Sunday was a much-dreaded day in Mary's calendar, partly because she
surrendered herself to the maternal monologue of how dreadful it was
to have a daughter in business and not a lady in a home of her own,
and partly because she missed the office routine and the magical
stimulation of Steve's presence. Besides, Trudy was a thorn in Mary's
flesh and on Sundays the thorn had a chance to assert herself in
particularly unendurable fashion.
For instance--the Sunday morning following the Gorgeous Girl's visit
to Steve's office Trudy unwillingly dragged herself downstairs at
half-past ten in a faded, bescrolled kimono over careless lingerie,
her hair bundled under a partially soiled boudoir cap, and her feet
flopping along in tattered silk slippers.
"Oh, dear, it's Sunday again," she began. "Goodness me, Mary, I'd hate
to be as good as you are--always up and smiling! Why don't you have a
permanent smile put on your face? It would be lots easier."
At which joke Luke giggled, and Mrs. Faithful, ensconced in a large
rocker behind the starched curtains so that nothing passing on the
street could escape her eagle, melancholy eye, nodded approval and
added: "I should think Mary would lie abed the one morning she could.
But no, she gets Luke up no matter what the weather is, and flies
round like a house afire. When I was in my father's house I never had
to lift a finger. Trudy, I wish you could have seen my bedroom. I had
a mahogany four-poster bed with white draperies, and a dresser to
match the bed, and my father bought me a silver toilet set when he was
in Lexington, Kentucky, one time. He used to go there to sell horses.
I remember one time I went with him and if I do say so I was much
admired.
"I rode horseback those days and I had a dappled-gray pony named Pet,
and everyone said it was just like looking at a picture to see me go
prancing by. Of course I never thought about it. I wore a black velvet
riding habit with a long train and a black velvet hat with a white
plume just floating behind, and I had white gauntlets, too.
"Mary, Trudy wants her coffee. Hot cakes? Oh, pshaw, they won't hurt
you a mite. I was raised on 'em. I guess I'll have another plateful,
Mary, while you're frying 'em. I'm so comfortable I hate to get up....
You poor little girls having to go out and hustle all week long and
not half appreciated! Never mind, some Prince Charming will come and
carry you off sometime." Whereat she waddled to the table to wait for
the hot cakes to arrive.
Mrs. Faithful had pepper-and-salt-coloured hair and small dark eyes
that snapped like an angry bird's, and a huge double chin. Her
nondescript shape resolved itself into a high, peaked lap over which,
when not eating hot cakes, her stubby hands seemed eternally clasped.
"Mary takes after her pa, poor child," she had told Trudy confidentially.
"Lean and lank as a clothes pole! And those gray eyes that look you
straight through. I wish she didn't think so much of the office and
would get a nice young man. I'd like to know what it is in those books she
finds so fascinating. Can you tell me? I tried to read Omar Canine
myself but it was too much for me."
"I'm no highbrow," Trudy had laughed. "Mary is; and a fine girl,
besides," she had added, resentfully.
With all Trudy's shallow nature and shrewd selfishness she was as fond
of Mary as she was capable of being fond of any one. Besides, it was
more comfortable to be a member of the Faithful household for nine
dollars a week and be allowed hot cakes and sirup a la kimono on
Sunday morning; to have Gaylord Vondeplosshe, her friend, frequent the
parlour at will; to use the telephone and laundry, and to occupy the
best room in the house than to have to tuck into a room similar to
Miss Lunk's--and she was truly grateful to Mary for having taken her
in. She felt that Mrs. Faithful underestimated her man of the family.
Mary at the present time earned forty dollars a week. Out of this she
supported her family and saved a little. At regular intervals she
tried persuading her mother to leave the old-fashioned house and move
into a modern apartment, which would give her the opportunity of
dispensing with Trudy as a boarder. But her mother liked Trudy, with
her airs and graces, her beaux, her startling frocks. Trudy was
company; Mary was not. She was the breadwinner and a wonderful
daughter, as Mrs. Faithful always said when callers mentioned her. But
the mother had never been friends with her children nor with their
father. So Mary had grown up accustomed to work and loneliness; and,
most important of all, accustomed to considering everyone else first
and herself last. It was Mary who saw beneath the boisterousness of
Luke's boy nature and spied the good therein, trying to develop it as
best she could. Aside from Luke and her business she found amusement
in her dream life of loving Steve O'Valley and vicariously sharing his
joys and sorrows, safeguarding his interests.
She had told herself four years ago: "You clumsy, thin business
woman--the idea of halfway dreaming that such a man as Steve would
ever love you! Of course he's intended for the Gorgeous Girl; the very
law of opposites makes him care for her--pretty, useless doll. So take
your joy in being his business partner, because the Gorgeous Girl can
never share the partnership any more than you could share his name;
and there's a heap of comfort in being of some use."
After which self-inflicted homily Mary had set to work and followed
her own advice. She had discovered very shortly that there were many
things to enjoy and be thankful for.
As soon as she was able Mary had refurnished her father's study and
taken it for her own. Here she made out household bills, lectured
Luke, planned work, sewed, and read. It was a shabby, cheery room with
a faded old carpet, an open fireplace, some easy-chairs, and a
black-walnut secretary over which her father had dreamed his dreams.
On the walls were stereotyped engravings such as Cherry Ripe and The
Call to Arms, which Mrs. Faithful refused to part with; no one,
herself included, ever knowing just why.
Mary also took herself to task in the little study in as impersonal a
manner as a true father confessor. "You are twenty-six and growing
set in your ways," she would mentally accuse--"always wanting a
certain table at the cafe and a certain waitress. Old Maid! Must
have your little French book to read away at as you munch your
rolls and refuse to be sociable. Hermitess! And always buy chocolates
and a London _News_ on Saturday night. Getting so you fuss if you
have square-topped hairpins instead of round, and letting milliners
sell you any sort of hats because you are too busy to prink! Going to
art galleries and concerts alone--and quite satisfied to do so. Now,
please, Mary, try not to be so queer and horrid!" Followed by a
one-sided debate as to whether or not these were normal symptoms of
maturity, and if she were mistress of a house would she not entertain
equally set notions regarding brands of soap, and so on?
"Office notions are not so nice as the frilly,
cry-on-a-shoulder-when-the-biscuits-burn notions," she would end,
dolefully. "Fancy my tall self weeping on the superintendent's
shoulder because a cablegram has gone astray! Making women over into
commercial nuns is a problem--some of us take it easily and don't try
to fight back, some of us fight and end defeated and bitter, and some
of us don't play the game but just our own hand--like Trudy. And
what's the square game for a commercial nun? That is what I'd like to
know."
She would then find herself dreaming of two distinct forks in the
road, both of which might be possible for her but only one of which
was probable. Each fork led to a feminine rainbow ending.
The more probable fork would resolve itself, a few years hence,
into a trim suburban bungalow with a neat roadster to whisk
her into business and whisk her away from it. The frilly,
cry-on-a-shoulder-when-the-biscuits-burn part of Mary would have
long ago vanished, leaving the business woman quite serene and
satisfied. She would find her happiness in mere things--in owning
her home; in facing old age single-handed and knowing it would not
bring the gray wolf; in helping Luke through college while her
mother was in a comfy orthodox heaven with plenty of plates of hot
cakes and dozens of starched window curtains; in rejoicing at some new
possession for her living room, at her immaculate business costumes,
new books, tickets for the opera season; in vacationing wherever she
wished, sometimes with other commercial nuns and sometimes alone;
in having that selfish, tempting freedom of time and lack of
personal demands which permit a woman to be always well groomed
and physically rested, and to take refuge in a sanitarium whenever
business worries pressed too hard. To sum it up: it meant to sit on
the curbstone--a nice, steam-heated, artistically furnished
curbstone, to be sure, and have to watch the procession pass by.
The other fork in the road led to a shadowy rainbow since Mary knew so
little concerning it. It comprised the exacting, unselfish role of
having baby fingers tagging at her skirts and shutting her away from
easy routines and lack of responsibility; of having a house to suit
her family first and herself last; of growing old and tired with the
younger things growing up and away from her, and the strong-shouldered
man demanding to be mothered, after the fashion of all really
strong-shouldered and successful men--requiring more of her patience
and love than all the young things combined; of subordinating her
personality, perhaps her ideas, and most certainly her surface
interests. To be that almost mystical relation, a wife; which includes
far more than having Mrs. Stephen O'Valley--just for example--on a
calling card.
To her lot would fall the task of always being there to welcome the
strong man with tender joy when he has succeeded or to comfort him
with equal tenderness when he has failed, and at all times spurring
him to live up to the ideal his wife has set for him. To stay aloof
from his work inasmuch as it would annoy him, yet to be adviser
emeritus, whether the matter involved hiring a new sweeper-out or
moving the whole plant to the end of the world. Someone who ministered
to the needs of the strong man's very soul in unsuspected, often
unconscious and unthanked fashion; such a trifle as a rose-shaded lamp
for tired eyes; a funny bundle of domestic happenings told cleverly to
offset the jarring problems of commerce; a song played by sympathetic
fingers; a little poem tucked in the blotter of the strong man's desk,
an artful praising of the strong man's self!
Mary realized this latter fork was not probable--nor was she unhappy
because of it. She sometimes retired to her study to vow eternal wrath
upon Trudy Burrows for having attached herself to the household; or to
pray that her mother be enlightened to the extent of moving; but
beyond an occasional "mad on," as Luke said, Mary viewed life from the
angle of the doughnut and not that of the hole.
"I wish someone else would try baking these greasy things," she said,
coming in with another plateful.
"Why don't you slip on a kimono instead of a starched house dress,
Mary? Whoever is spick-and-span on Sunday morning?"
"Don't get Mary to lecturing," Mrs. Faithful warned between bites.
"She'll make us all go to church if we're not careful. Are you going
out with Gay to-day, Trudy?"
"Yes. And I'm awfully mad at him, too. It's fierce the way he
gambles."
"Don't be too harsh; it's a mistake to nag too much beforehand. He's a
lovely young man and I wish Luke could have one of those green paddock
coats. I always like a gentleman's coat with a sealskin collar, don't
you?"
"If it's paid for." Trudy's eyes darkened. "Just because Gay comes of
a wonderful family he thinks he has the keys to the city."
"He's a lovely young man," Mrs. Faithful reiterated. "Oh, what did
Beatrice Constantine wear when she came down to the office?"
"Clothes." Mary was deep in the Sunday paper art section.
"She looked like a Christmas tree on fire," Luke supplemented. "Lovely
butter-coloured hair she has!"
"That will do. She is very nice, but different from our sort." Mary
glanced up from her paper.
Trudy bridled. "She's no different; she has money. My things have as
much style. Gaylord knows her intimately, and he says she is a
wretched dancer and pouts if things don't please her. The best tailors
and modistes in the country make her things. Who wouldn't look well?
If I had one tenth of her income I'd be a more Gorgeous Girl than she
is--and don't I wish I had it! Oh, boy! Why, that girl has her maid,
the most wonderful jewellery you ever saw, two automobiles of her own
and a saddle horse, and her father owns the best apartment house in
town, and Beatrice is going to have the best apartment in it when she
marries Steve. And you can just bet she knew she was going to marry
him a long time ago--because she knew he'd rob the Bank of England to
get a fortune. She's flirted with everyone from an English nobleman to
the Prince of Siam, and now she's marrying the handsomest, brightest,
most devoted cave man in the world." Trudy glanced at Mary. "Yet she
doesn't really care for him, she just wants to be married before she
is considered passee." Trudy was very proud of her occasional French.
"She'll be twenty-six her next birthday!"
"Dear me, girls take their time these days; I was eighteen the day Mr.
Faithful led me to the altar."
"When are you going to get married?" Luke asked Trudy with malice
aforethought.
"Oh, I'll give Mary a chance. She don't want to dance in the pig
trough."
Mary laid down the paper. "I wish you people would finish eating.
Luke, are you going fishing with me out at the old mill? Then you
better get the walks swept. We'll be home in time for dinner, mother.
I'll leave the things as nearly ready as I can. How about you,
Trudy?"
"Gay wants me to go to the Boulevard Cafe--they dance on Sunday just
the same as weekdays--and then we'll do a movie afterward. I suppose
Steve and his Beatrice are now revelling in the Constantine
conservatory, with Steve walking on all fours to prove his devotion.
Why is it some girls have everything? Look at me--no one cares if I
live or die. First I had a stepmother, and then I tried living with a
great-aunt, and then I went to work. Here I am still working, and a
lot of thanks I get for it. I'd like to see the Gorgeous Girl have to
work--well, I would!"
Mary brushed by with some dishes. Whereupon Trudy settled herself in
an easy-chair and ran through the supplement sections, discussing the
latest New York scandal with Mrs. Faithful. The next thing on Trudy's
Sunday program was washing out "just a few little things, Mary dear;
and have you a bit of soap I could borrow and may I use the electric
iron for half a jiffy?"
Presently there were hung on the line some dabs of chiffon and lace,
and Trudy, taking advantage of her softened cuticle, sat down and did
her nails, Mrs. Faithful admiring the high polish she achieved and
reading Advice to the Anxious aloud for general edification.
After ironing the few little things Trudy shampooed her hair with
scented soap and by the time its reddish loveliness was dry it was
high noon and she repaired to her bedroom to mend and write letters.
At one o'clock, in the process of dressing, she rapped at Mary's door
and asked to borrow a quarter.
"I'm terribly poor this week and if I should have a quarrel with Gay I
want to have enough carfare to come home alone--you know how we
scrap," she explained.
About two o'clock there emerged from the front bedroom an excellent
imitation of the Gorgeous Girl. Trudy had not exaggerated when she
boasted of her own style. Though patronizing credit houses exclusively
and possessing not a single woollen garment nor a penny of savings,
she tripped down the stairs in answer to Luke's summons, a fearful,
wonderful little person in a gown of fog-coloured chiffon with a
violet sash and a great many trimmings of blue crystal beads. She
boasted of a large black hat which seemed a combination of a Spanish
scarf and a South Sea pirate's pet headgear, since it had red coral
earrings hanging at either side of it. Over her shoulders was a
luxurious feline pelt masquerading comfortably under the title of
spotted fox. White kid boots, white kid gloves, a silver vanity case,
and a red satin rose at her waist completed the costume.
Standing in the offing, about to decamp with Mary, Luke gave a low
whistle to tip her off to look out the window and not miss it. Mrs.
Faithful was peeking from behind the starched window curtains as there
glided before her eyes the most elegant young woman and impressive
young man ever earning fifteen dollars and no dollars a week
respectively.
"How do they do it?" Mary sighed. "Come, Luke, let's get on the trail
of something green and real."
A few moments later there hurried along the same pathway a tall young
woman in an old tailored suit which impressed one with the wearer's
plainness. Instead of a silver vanity case she was laden with a basket
of newspapers, string, and a garden trowel, indicating that fern roots
would be the vogue shortly. Shouldering fishing tackle Luke turned his
freckled face toward Mary as they began a conversation, and his
perpetual grin was momentarily replaced by an expression of respect.
At least his sister was not like the average woman, who depends solely
on her clothes to make her interesting.
Meantime, Trudy and Gaylord Vondeplosshe were beginning their
Sunday outing by walking to the corner in silence--the usual
preliminary to a dispute. Gaylord was quite Trudy's equal as to
clothes, not only in style but in forgetfulness to pay for them.
Still, he was not unusual after one fully comprehended the type, for
they flourished like mushrooms. His had been a rich and powerful
family--only-the-father-drank-you-see variety--the sort taking the
fastest and most expensive steamer to Europe and bringing shame
upon the name of American traveller after arriving. Gaylord had been
the adored and only son, and his adored and older sister had managed
to marry fairly well before the crash came and debts surrounded the
entire Vondeplosshe estate.
He was small and frail, a trifle bow-legged to be exact, with pale and
perpetually weeping eyes, a crooked little nose with an incipient
moustache doing its best to hide a thick upper lip. His forehead
sloped back like a cat's, and his scanty, sandy hair was brushed into
a shining pompadour, while white eyelashes gave an uncanny expression
to his face. Abortive lumps of flesh stuck on at careless intervals
sufficed for ears, and his scrawny neck with its absurdly correct
collar and wild necktie seemed like an old, old man's when he dresses
for his golden-wedding anniversary. Everything about Gaylord seemed
old, exhausted, quite ineffectual. His mother had never tired boasting
that Gaylord had had mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, St.
Vitus dance, double pneumonia, and typhoid, had broken three ribs, his
left arm, his right leg, and his nose--all before reaching the age of
sixteen. And yet she raised him!
Coupled with this and the fact of his father's failure people were
lenient to him.
"He's Vondeplosshe's boy," they said; so they gave him a position or a
loan or a letter of introduction, and thought at the same time what a
splendid thing it was Vondeplosshe was out of it instead of having to
stand by and see his son make a complete foozle. For some time Gaylord
had been scampering up and down the gauntlet of sympathy, and as long
as he could borrow more money in Hanover than he could possibly earn
he refused to go to work.
Originally he would have been almost as rich as the Gorgeous Girl
herself, but as it was he was poor as Trudy Burrows, only Trudy was a
nobody, her family being a dark and uncertain quantity in the wilds of
Michigan.
Whereas Gaylord was Vondeplosshe and he could--and did--saunter past a
red-brick mansion and remark pensively: "I was born in the room over
the large bay window; the one next to it was my nursery--a dear old
spot. Rather tough, old dear, to have to stand outside!" Or: "Father
was a charter member of the club, so they carry me along without dues.
Decent of them, isn't it? Father was a prince among men, robbed right
and left, y'know--always the way when a gentleman tries to be in
business. Some say it was Constantine himself who did the worst of it.
Of course never repeat it, will you? It takes a man with Steve
O'Valley's coarseness to forge ahead."
His wobbly, rickety little body always wore the most startling of
costumes. A green paddock coat, well padded, a yellow walking stick in
the thin fingers, a rakish hat, patent-leather boots, striped suits,
silk shirts with handkerchiefs to match, a gold cigarette case, and a
watch chain like a woman's, were a few of Gaylord's daily requisites.
He lived at a club called The Hunters of Arcadia, where he paid an
occasional stipend and gambled regularly, sometimes winning. He also
promoted things in half-dishonest, half-idiotic fashion, undertaking
to bring on opera singers for a concert, sometimes realizing a decent
sum and sometimes going behind only to be rescued by an old family
friend.
Gaylord was always keen on dinner invitations. And because he was a
son of Vondeplosshe the same family friends endured his conceited
twaddle and his knock-kneed, wicked little self, and sighed with
relief when he went away. It would be so much easier to send these
dethroned sons of rich men a supply of groceries and an order for
coal!
Besides these lines of activity Gaylord wrote society items for the
paper, and as he knew everyone and everything about them he was worth
a stipend to the editor. He was considered a divine dancer by the
buds, and counted as a cutey by widows. But his standing among
creditors was: If he offered a check for the entire amount or a dollar
on account, pass up the check!
Steve had destroyed several IOU's with Gaylord's name attached for the
sole reason that Gay had been a playmate of Beatrice's and she rather
favoured him.
"He is so convenient," she had defended. "You can always call him up
at the last minute if someone has disappointed for cards or dinner,
and he is never busy. He can shop with you as well as a woman, lunch
with you, dance with you--and he does know the proper way to handle
small silver. Besides, he loves Monster." Monster was Bea's
pound-and-a-half spaniel, which barked her wonder at the silken
beauty of Beatrice's boudoir.
So Gaylord travelled his own peculiar gait, with his married sister
occasionally sending him checks; as busy as a kitten with a ball of
yarn in making everyone tolerate though loathing him. When he visited
Steve's office in the first flush of Steve's success, to ask the
thousandth favour from him, and spied Trudy Burrows in all her
lemon-kid booted, pink-chiffon waisted, red-haired loveliness--as
virile and bewitching as any one Gaylord's pale little mind could
picture--he proved himself a "true democrat," as he boasted at the
club, and offered her his hand in marriage in short order.
Having just despaired of winning a moneyed bride Gaylord chose
Truletta, reasoning that if she were a little nobody it would give
him the whiphand over her, since she would feel that to marry a
Vondeplosshe was no small triumph. Besides, a chic red-haired wife
who knew how to make the most of nothing and to smile, showing
thirty-two pearly teeth as cleverly as any dental ad, would not be a
bad asset among his men friends. Had the Vondeplosshe fortunes
remained intact and Gay met Trudy he would still have pressed his
attentions upon her, though they might not have taken the form of an
offer of marriage. Trudy's virile, magnetic personality would have
commanded this weakling's attention and admiration at any time and
in any circumstances--which is the way of things.
Very wisely Trudy kept the engagement somewhat of a secret. She
estimated that by being seen with Gay she might meet a not impoverished
and real man; and Gay--who still hoped for an heiress to fall madly in
love with him--was willing to let the matter be a mere understanding.
So this oversubscribed flirt and this underendowed young gentleman had
been waiting for nearly two years for something to live on in order
to be married or else two new affinities in order that they might
part amicably.
They did not speak until they were in the cafe, where it looked well
for Gaylord to be attentive and Trudy gracious.
Under the mask of a smile Trudy began: "I'm cross. You were gambling
again--yes, you were! Never mind how I know. I know!... I'll have
macaroni, ripe olives, and a cream puff."
"The same," Gay said, mournfully; adding: "Well, deary, I have to
live!"
"Why not work? I do. You sponge along and waste everyone's time. I'm
not getting any younger, and it's pretty rough to be in an office with
horrid people ordering you round--to have to hear all about Beatrice
Constantine and her wonderful wedding. I'm as good as she is--yet I'll
not be asked, and you will be."
"Of course I am. I'm her oldest playmate," he said, proudly.
Trudy's temper jumped the stockade. "So, you paste jewel, you'll go
mincing into church and see her married and dance with everyone
afterward; and I'll sit in the office licking postage stamps while you
kiss the bride! I'm better looking than she is; and if you are good
enough to go to that wedding so am I!"
"Why, Trudy," he began, in a bewildered fashion, "don't make a
scene."
"No use making a scene in a fifty-cent cafe," she told him, bitterly,
"but I'm plenty good looking enough to have a real man buy me a real
dinner with a taxi and wine and violets as extras. Don't think you are
doing me a big favour by being engaged to me."
"Oh, you're a great little girl," he said, nervously; "and it's all
going to come out right. It does rile me to think of your working for
Steve. Never mind, my ship will come in and then we'll show them
all."
"I'm twenty-three and you're twenty-six, and my eyes ache when I work
steadily. I'll have to wear glasses in another year--but I'll wash
clothes before I'll do it!"
"When it gets that bad we'll be married," he said, seriously.
The humour passed over Trudy's head. "Married on what?" She was her
prettiest when angry and she stirred in Gaylord's one-cylinder brain a
resolve to play fairy-godfather husband and somehow deliver a fortune
at her feet.
"I can't live at your club," she continued; "and your sister is
jealous of her husband and wouldn't want me round. We couldn't live
with the Faithfuls; Mary's a nice girl but I can't go their quiet
ways. I only stay because it's cheap. I owe more than two hundred
dollars right now."
Gaylord was sympathetic. "I owe more than that," he admitted; "but I'm
going to have some concerts and there'll be good horse races
soon--sure things, you know. You'll see, little girl. What would you
say if I showed you a real bank account?"
"I wouldn't waste time talking. I'd marry you." Her good humour was
returning. "Honest, Gay, do you think you might draw down some kale?"
Like all her kind she had an absurd trust in any one who was paying
her attention. With a different type of man Trudy would have been
beaten, courageously had the gentleman arrested, and then interfered
when the judge was directing him to the penitentiary.
"I wish you wouldn't talk that way. When we are married and you meet
my friends you'll have to brush up on a lot of things."
"I guess I'll manage to be understood," she retorted; "and when we are
married maybe you can get my job so as to support your wife!"
The orchestra began playing a new rag, and Trudy and Gay immediately
left their chairs to be the first couple on the floor. They were
prouder of their dancing than of each other.
After several dances they became optimistic over the future and
finished their dinner with the understanding that at the first
possible moment they would be married and Trudy was to be a
hard-working little bride causing her husband's men friends to be nice
to the Vondeplosshes, while husband would persuade the Gorgeous Girl
to be nice to his wife.
They decided, too, that Mary Faithful was clever and good--but queer.
That Steve O'Valley would discover that a self-made man could not
marry an heiress and make a go of it as well as a man of an
aristocratic family could marry an adorable red-haired young lady and
elevate her to his position.
That Trudy was far more beautiful than Beatrice Constantine, and as
one lived only once in this world--why not always strive for a good
time?
Whereat they had a farewell dance and moved on to the moving-picture
world, where they held hands and stared vapidly at the films,
repairing to a cafeteria on a side street for a lunch, and then to
the Faithful parlour. Mary had gone to church, Luke had boy friends in
to discuss a summer camp, and his mother snored mildly on the
dining-room sofa.
They took possession of the front parlour, and the enlarged crayons of
the Faithful ancestors bore witness that for more than two hours these
young people giggled over the comic supplement, debated as to the
private life of the movie stars, tried new dance steps, and then
planned how to get everything for nothing and, having done so, not to
share their spoils.
"A perfectly lovely time!" Trudy said, glibly, as she kissed Gay
good-night.
"Perfectly lovely!" he echoed, politely. "Don't work too hard
to-morrow, Babseley, will you? And do nothing rash until you see me."
"Call me up to-morrow at eight, Bubseley," she giggled. The pet names
were of Gay's choice.
So Bubseley tottered down the walk while Babseley turned out the
lights and retired to her room with a bag of candy and a paprika-brand
of novel. At midnight she tossed it aside and with self-pity prepared
to go to sleep.
"And I'll have to go to work to-morrow," she sighed, planning her next
silk dress as she did up the Titian hair in curlers.