Mrs. Winters' little apartment on West 79th Street--she heads letters
from it playfully “The Hen Coop” for there is almost always some member
of her own sex doing time with the generous Mrs. Winters. Mrs. Winters
is quite celebrated in St. Louis for her personally-conducted tours of
New York with stout Middle-Western matrons or spectacled school girls
east for visits and clothes--Mrs. Winters has the perfectly-varnished
manners, the lust for retailing unimportant statistics and the
supercilious fixed smile of a professional guide. Mrs. Winters' little
apartment, that all the friends who come to her to be fed and bedded
and patronized tell her is so charmingly New Yorky because of her dear
little kitchenette with the asthmatic gas-plates, the imitation English
plate-rail around the dining-room wall, the bookcase with real books--a
countable number of them--and on top of it the genuine signed photograph
of Caruso for which Mrs. Winters paid the sum she always makes you guess
about, at a charity-bazaar.
Mrs. Winters herself--the Mrs. Winters who is _so_ interested in young
people as long as they will do exactly what she wants them to--every
inch of her from her waved white hair to the black jet spangles on
her dinner gown or the notes of her “cultivated” voice as frosted and
glittery and artificial as a piece of _glacé_ fruit. And with her,
Nancy, dressed for dinner too, because Mrs. Winters feels it to be one's
duty to oneself to dress for dinner always, no matter how much one's
guests may wish to relax--Nancy as much out of place in the apartment
whose very cushions seem to smell of that modern old-maidishness that
takes itself for superior feminist virtue as a crocus would be in an
exhibition of wool flowers--a Nancy who doesn't talk much and has faint
blue stains under her eyes.
“So everything went very satisfactorily indeed today, dear Nancy?”
Mrs. Winters' voice implies the uselessness of the question. Nancy is
staying with Mrs. Winters--it would be very strange indeed if even the
least important accompaniments of such a visit were not of the most
satisfactory kind.
“Yes, Mrs. Winters. Nothing particularly happened, that is--but they
like my work.”
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Winters croons at her, she is being motherly. The
effect produced is rather that of a sudden assumption of life and
vicarious motherhood on the part of a small, brightly-painted porcelain
hen.
“Then they will be sending you over shortly, no doubt? Across the wide
wide sea--” adds Mrs. Winters archly, but Nancy is too tired-looking to
respond to the fancy.
“I suppose they will when they get ready,” she answers briefly and
returns to her chicken-croquette with the thought that in its sleekness,
genteelness, crumblingness, and generally unnourishing qualities it is
really rather like Mrs. Winters. An immense desire, after two weeks of
Mrs. Winters' mental and physical cuisine for something as hearty
and gross as the mere sight of a double planked steak possesses her
achingly--but Mrs. Winters was told once that she “ate like a bird.”
“Well, in that case, dear Nancy, you certainly must not leave New
York indefinitely without making the most of your opportunities,” Mrs.
Winters' tones are full of genteel decision. “I have made out a little
list, dear Nancy, of some things which I thought, in my funny old way,
might possibly be worth your while. We will talk it over after dinner,
if you like--”
“Thank you so much, dear Mrs. Winters” says Nancy with dutiful
hopelessness. She is only too well acquainted with Mrs. Winters' little
lists. “As an _artist_, as an _artist_, dear Nancy, especially.” Mrs.
Winters breathes somewhat heavily, “Things That Should Interest you.
Nothing Bizarre, you understand, Nothing Merely Freakish--but some of
the Things in New York that I, Personally, have found Worth While.”
The Things that Mrs. Winters Has Found Personally Worth While include
a great many public monuments. She will give Nancy a similar list of
Things Worth While in Paris, too, before Nancy sails--and Nancy smiles
acceptably as each one of them is mentioned.
Only Mrs. Winters cannot see what Nancy is thinking--for if she did she
might become startlingly human at once as even the most perfectly poised
of spinsters is apt to do when she finds a rat in the middle of her
neat white bed. For Nancy is thinking quite freely of various quaint and
everlasting places of torment that might very well be devised for Mrs.
Winters--and of the naked fact that once arrived in Paris it will
matter very little to anybody what becomes of her and least of all
to herself--and that Mrs. Winters doesn't know that she saw a chance
mention of Mr. Oliver Crowe, the author of “Dancer's Holiday” today in
the “Bookman” and that she cut it out because it had Oliver's name in
it and that it is now in the smallest pocket of her bag with his creased
and recreased first letter and the lucky piece she had from her nicest
uncle and a little dim photograph of Mr. Ellicott and half a dozen other
small precious things.