United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way
to a waiting motor car and said, “Home!” to the chauffeur. He drove
her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors
called the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above
Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on
the Sound.
There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted
her noisily.
“I have had a most splendid adventure!” said Sister Anne. “There were
six of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real
nurse and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about
it to keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry
for me; and....”
One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself
on knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights
and prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
“Don't you believe it!” he interrupted. “That man who was talking to you
was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was
just leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who
wouldn't know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper.”
Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
“He did not know me!” she protested. “It quite upset him that I should
be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds.”
There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
“I told him,” continued Sister Anne, “that I got forty dollars a month,
and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
be a manicurist.”
“Oh, Anita!” protested the admiring chorus.
“And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show
me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a
drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the
park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'”
“Oh, Anita!” shrieked the chorus.
Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the
American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry
Anita Flagg, was amused.
“What an awfully jolly rag!” he cried. “And what are you going to do
about it?”
“Nothing,” said Anita Flagg. “The reporters have been making me
ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
And,” she added, “that's all there is to that!”
That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: “I want to hear
you call me Sister.”
“Call you what?” exclaimed the young man. “I will tell you,” he
whispered, “what I'd like to call you!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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