"I see. Well, have him call me up as soon as he comes in. It is very important."
When Steve reached home that night he found Beatrice in a well-developed pout.
"Didn"t you get my message?" she demanded, sharply.
"Just as I was leaving the office. I looked in there on--on my way back. I saw no use in telephoning then. What is it, dear?"
"It"s too late now. You have ruined my day."
"Sorry. What is too late?"
"I wanted you to go to Amityville with me; there is a wonderful astrologer there who casts life horoscopes. He predicted this whole war and the Bolsheviki and bombs and everything, and I wanted him to do ours. Alice Twill says he is positively uncanny."
Steve shook his head. "No long-haired cocoanut throwers for mine," he said, briefly, unfolding his paper.
"But I wanted you to go."
"Well, I do not approve of such things; they are a waste of time and money."
"I have my own money," she informed him, curtly.
Steve laid aside the paper. "I have known that for some time."
"Besides, it is rude to refuse to call me when I have asked you to do so. It makes me ridiculous in the eyes of your employees."
Recalling the shift of offices Steve suppressed a smile. "It was nothing important, Bea, and I am mighty busy. Your father never had time to play; he worked a great deal harder than I have worked."
"I can"t help that. You must not expect me to be a little stay-at-home.
You knew that before we were even engaged. Besides, I"m no child----"
"No, but you act like one." He spoke almost before he thought. "You are a woman nearly twenty-six years old, yet you haven"t the poise of girls eighteen that I have known. Still, they were farm or working girls. I"ve sometimes wondered what it is that makes you and your friends always seem so childish and nave--at times. Aren"t you ever going to grow up--any of you?"
"Do you want a pack of old women?" she demanded. "How can you find fault with my friends? You seem to forget how splendidly they have treated you."
A cave man must be muzzled, handcuffed, and Under the anaesthetic of unreality and indifference to be a satisfactory husband for a modern Gorgeous Girl.
"Why shouldn"t they treat me splendidly? I have never robbed or maltreated any of them. Tell me something. It is time we talked seriously. We can"t exist on the cream-puff kind of conversation. What in the world has your way of going through these finishing schools done for you?"
The dove-coloured eyes flickered angrily. "I had a terribly good time," she began. "Besides, it"s the proper thing--girls don"t come out at twenty and marry off and let that be the end of it. You really have a much better time now if you wait until you are twenty-five, and then you somehow have learned how to be a girl for an indefinite period. As for the finishing school in America--well, we had a wonderful sorority."
"I"ve met college women who were clear-headed persons deserving the best and usually attaining it--but I"ve never taken a microscope to the sort of women playing the game from the froth end. I"m wondering what your ideas were."
"You visited me--you met my friends--my chaperons--you wrote me each day."
"I was in love and busy making my fortune. I was as shy as a backwoods product--you know that--and afraid you would be carried off by someone else before I could come up to the sum your father demanded of me. I have nothing but a hazy idea as to a great many girls of all sorts and sizes--and mostly you."
"Well, we had wonderful lectures and things; and I had a wonderful crush on some of the younger teachers--that is a great deal of fun."
"Crushes?"
"You must have crushes unless you"re a n.o.body--and there"s nothing so much a lark. You select your crush and then you rush her. I had a darling teacher, she is doing war work in Paris now. She was a doll. I adored her the moment I saw her and I sent her presents and left flowers in her room, orchids on Sundays, until she made me stop. One day a whole lot of us who had been rushing her clipped off locks of our hair and fastened them in little gauze bags and we strung a doll clothes line across her room and pinned the little bags on it and left a note for her saying: "Your scalp line!""
"What did that amount to?"
"Oh, it was fun. And I had another crush right after that one. Then some of the cla.s.ses were interesting. I liked psychology best of all because you could fake the answers and cram for exams more easily.
Math. and history require facts. There was one perfectly thrilling experience with fish. You know fish distinguish colours, one from the other, and are guided by colour sense rather than a sense of smell. We had red sticks and green sticks and blue sticks in a tank of fish, and for days we put the fish food on the green sticks and the fish would swim right over to get it, and then we put it on the red sticks and they still swam over to the green sticks and waited round--so it was recognizing colour and not the food. And a lot of things like that."
Steve laughed. "I hope the fish wised up in time."
Beatrice looked at him disapprovingly. "If you had gone to college it might have made a great difference," she said.
"Possibly," he admitted; "but I"ll let the rest of the boys wait on the fishes. Did you go to domestic science this morning?"
"Yes, it was omelet. Mine was like leather. The gas stove makes my head ache. But we are going to have a Roman pageant to close the season--all about a Roman matron, and that will be lots of fun."
"You eat too much candy; that is what makes your head ache," he corrected.
She pretended not to hear him. "It is time to dress."
"Don"t say there"s a party to-night," he begged.
"Of course there is, and you know it. The Homers are giving a dinner for their daughter. Everyone is to wear their costumes wrong side out.
Isn"t that clever? I laid out a white linen suit for you; it will look so well turned inside out; and I am going to wear an organdie that has a wonderful satin lining. There is no reason why we must be frumps."
"I"d rather stay home and play cribbage," Steve said, almost wistfully. "There"s a rain creeping up. Let"s not go!"
"I hate staying home when it is raining." Beatrice went into her room to try the effect of a sash wrong side out. "It is so dull in a big drawing room when there are just two people," she added, as Steve appeared in the doorway.
"Two people make a home," he found himself answering.
The Gorgeous Girl glanced at him briefly, during which instant she seemed quite twenty-six years old and the spoiled daughter of a rich man, the childish, senseless part of her had vanished. "Would you please take Monster into the kitchen for her supper?" she asked, almost insolently.
So the owner of the O"Valley Leather Works found his solace in tucking the pound-and-a-half spaniel under his arm and trying to convince himself that he was all wrong and a self-made man must keep a watch on himself lest he become a boor!
The day the O"Valleys left for New York in company with three other couples Mr. and Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d Vondeplosshe arrived in Hanover, having visited until their welcome was not alone worn out but impossible ever to be replaced. A social item in the evening paper stated that they had taken an apartment at the Graystone and would be at home to their friends--whoever they might be.
If Gay"s club and his friends had determined merely to be polite and not welcome his wife, Trudy had determined that they would not only welcome her but insist upon being helpful to them; as for her former a.s.sociates--they would be treated to a curt bow. This, however, did not include the Faithfuls. Mary was not to be ignored, nor did Trudy wish to ignore her. All the good that was in Trudy responded to Mary"s goodness. She never tried to be to Mary--no one did more than once.
Nor did she try to flatter her. She was truly sorry for Mary"s colourless life, truly grieved that Mary would not consent to shape her eyebrows. But she respected her, and it was to Mary"s house that Mrs. Vondeplosshe repaired shortly after her arrival.
It was quite true that Beatrice Constantine would have developed much as Trudy had were the pampered person compelled to earn her living, and, like Trudy, too, would have married a half portion, bankrupt sn.o.b. As Trudy dashed into the Faithful living room, kissing Mary and her mother and shaking a finger at Luke, Mary thought what a splendid imitation she was of Beatrice returning from her honeymoon.
"As pretty as a picture," Mrs. Faithful declared, quite chirked up by the bridal atmosphere. "How do you do it, Trudy? And why didn"t you write us something besides postals? They always seem like printed handbills to me."
"Especially mine," Luke protested. "One of Sing Sing with the line: "I am thinking of you.""
Trudy giggled. "I didn"t have a minute and I bought postals in flocks.