“That was a stunning girl,” he said to himself. “She’s all right, too,
I’d be sworn, even if she does have to work. Perhaps if I’d told her
the truth instead of all that razzle-dazzle we might—but, confound it!
I had to play up to my clothes.”
Thus spoke the brave who was born and reared in the wigwams of the
tribe of the Manhattans.
The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly cross-town until
she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east,
facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary
gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a
handsome young lady in an elaborate house dress was looking anxiously
out the window.
“Oh, you madcap!” exclaimed the elder girl, when the other entered.
“When will you quit frightening us this way? It is two hours since you
ran out in that rag of an old dress and Marie’s hat. Mamma has been so
alarmed. She sent Louis in the auto to try to find you. You are a bad,
thoughtless Puss.”
The elder girl touched a button, and a maid came in a moment.
“Marie, tell mamma that Miss Marian has returned.”
“Don’t scold, sister. I only ran down to Mme. Theo’s to tell her to use
mauve insertion instead of pink. My costume and Marie’s hat were just
what I needed. Every one thought I was a shopgirl, I am sure.”
“Dinner is over, dear; you stayed so late.”
“I know. I slipped on the sidewalk and turned my ankle. I could not
walk, so I hobbled into a restaurant and sat there until I was better.
That is why I was so long.”
The two girls sat in the window seat, looking out at the lights and the
stream of hurrying vehicles in the avenue. The younger one cuddled down
with her head in her sister’s lap.
“We will have to marry some day,” she said dreamily—“both of us. We
have so much money that we will not be allowed to disappoint the
public. Do you want me to tell you the kind of a man I could love,
Sis?”
“Go on, you scatterbrain,” smiled the other.
“I could love a man with dark and kind blue eyes, who is gentle and
respectful to poor girls, who is handsome and good and does not try to
flirt. But I could love him only if he had an ambition, an object, some
work to do in the world. I would not care how poor he was if I could
help him build his way up. But, sister dear, the kind of man we always
meet—the man who lives an idle life between society and his clubs—I
could not love a man like that, even if his eyes were blue and he were
ever so kind to poor girls whom he met in the street.”
BY COURIER
It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters;
and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the
benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to
sit for a while and enjoy a foretaste of coming Spring.