“So glad to welcome you, you pretty baby,” she chirruped. “You’re going to love us all, aren’t you?”
“Yop,” said Warble, and smiled her engaging smile.
“You bet she’ll love us,” declared Leathersham, “she’ll make the world go round! Hello, Little One,” he turned to pat the cheek of a white-haired, red-faced old lady, who hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, stood by, listening in. “This, Mrs. Petticoat, is our Lady Bountiful, Mrs. Charity Givens—noted for her generosity. She ostentatiously heads all Donation Lists, and she’s going to start a rest cure where your husband’s unsuccessful cases may die in peace. And here’s one of the cases. Hello, Iva Payne!”
“Hello,” languidly responded a girl like a long pale lily—a Burne-Jones type, who sometimes carried around a small stained-glass window to rest her head against.
“Are you really Bill’s wife?” she asked, a little disinterestedly, of Warble.
“Yop,” said Warble, and made a face at her.
“How quaint,” said Iva.
“Whoopee, Baby! Here we are,” and Petticoat rescued his bride from the middle of a crowd and yanked her toward his car.
The car was a museum piece, and as Warble caromed into its cushions she felt that her lines had fallen in pleasant places.
That was the way Fate came to Warble. In big fat chunks, in slathers. Unexpected, sudden, inescapable—that’s Fate all over.
“I shall like Mr. Leathersham—I shall call him Goldie. They’re all nice and friendly—the men. But this town! Oh, my Heavens! This Jewel Casket—this Treasure Table! I can’t live through it! This Floating Island of a Tipsy Charlotte!” Her husband nudged her. “You look like you had a pain,” he said; “Scared? I don’t expect you to fit in at first. You have to get eased into things. It’s different from Pittsburgh. But you’ll come to like it—love is so free here, and the smartest people on earth.”
She winked at him. “I love you for your misunderstanding. I’m just dog-tired. And too many chocolates. Give me a rest, dear. I’m all in from wear sheeriness.”
She laid her feet in his lap and snuggled into the corner of the pearl-colored upholstery.
She was ready for her new home, beautiful, celebrated Ptomaine Haul. Petticoat told her that his mother had been living with him, but had fled incontinently on hearing a description of Warble.
The bride chuckled and smiled engagingly as the car slithered round a corner and stopped under the porte cochère of a great house set in the midst of a landscape.
Neo-Colonial, of a purity unsurpassed by the Colonists themselves.
A park stretching in front; gardens at the back; steps up to a great porch, and a front door copied from the Frary house in Old Deerfield.
A great hall—at its back twin halves of a perfect staircase. To the right, a charming morning room, where Petticoat led his bride.
“You like it? It’s not inharmonious. I left it as it is—in case you care to rebuild or redecorate.”
“It’s a sweet home—” she was touched by his indifference. “So artistic.”
Petticoat winced, but he was a polite chap, and he only said, carelessly, “Yes, home is where the art is,” and let it go at that.
In the hall and the great library she was conscious of vastness and magnificent distances, but, she thought, if necessary, I can use roller skates.
As she followed Petticoat and the current shift of servants upstairs, she quavered to herself like the fat little gods of the hearth.
She took her husband into her arms, and felt that at last she had realized her one time dreams of the moving pictures, ay, even to the final close-up.
What mattered, so long as she could paw at the satin back of his shirt, and admire his rich and expensive clothing.
“Dear—so dear—” she murmured.
CHAPTER IV
“The Leathershams are giving a ball for us to-night,” Petticoat said, casually, as he powdered his nose in the recesses of his triplicate mirror.
“A ball?”
“Oh, I don’t mean a dance—I mean—er—well, what you’d call a sociable, I suppose.”
“Oh, ain’t we got fun!”
“And, I say, Warble, I’ve got to chase a patient now; can you hike about a bit by yourself?”
“Course I can. Who’s your patient?”
“Avery Goodman—the rector of St. Judas’ church. He will eat terrapin made out of—you know what. And so, he’s all tied up in knots with ptomaine poisoning and I’ve got to straighten him out. It means a lot to us, you know.”
“I know; skittle.”
Left alone, Warble proceeded systematically to examine the interior of Ptomaine Haul. She gazed about her own bedroom and a small part of its exquisite beauty dawned upon her. It was an exact copy of Marie Antoinette’s and the delicately carved furniture and pale blue upholstery and hangings harmonized with the painted domed ceiling and paneled walls.
The dressing table bore beautiful appointments of ivory, as solid as Warble’s own dome and from the Cupid-held canopy over the bed to the embroidered satin foot-cushions, it was top hole.
The scent was of French powders, perfumes and essences and sachets, such as Warble had not smelled since before the war.
“Can you beat it,” she groaned. “How can I live with doodads like this?” She saw the furniture as a circle of hungry restaurant customers ready to eat her up. She kicked the dozen lace pillows off the head of the bed.
“No utility anywhere,” she cried. “Everything futile, inutile, brutal! I hate it! I hate it! Why did I ever—”
And then she remembered she was a Petticoat now, a lace, frilled Petticoat—not one of those that Oliver Herford so pathetically dubbed “the short and simple flannels of the poor.”
Yes, she was now a Petticoat—one of the aristocratic Cotton-Petticoats, washable, to be sure, but a dressy Frenchy Petticoat, and as such she must take her place on the family clothesline.
She drifted from oriel window to casement, and on to a great becurtained and becushioned bay, and looked out on the outlook.
She saw gardens like the Tuileries and Tuilerums, soft, shining pools, little skittering fountains, marble Cupids and gay-tinted flowers. This was the scene for her to look down upon and live up to.
“I mustn’t! I mustn’t! I’m nervous this afternoon! Am I sick?… Good Lord, I hope it isn’t that! Not now! I’d hate it—I’d be scared to death! Some day—but, please, kind Fate, not now! I don’t want to go down now with ptomaine poisoning! Not till after I’ve had my dinner! I’m going out for a walk.”
When Warble had plodded along for six hours, she had pretty well done up the town.
Ptomaine Street, which took its name from her husband’s own residence, was a wide, leafy avenue with a double row of fine old trees on each side. They were Lebbek trees, and the whole arrangement was patterned after the avenue which Josephine built for Napoleon, out to the Mena House.
She passed the homes of the most respectable citizens. Often they were set back from the road, and the box hedges or tall iron fences prevented her from seeing the houses. But she saw enough and sped on to the more interesting business and shopping section of Butterfly Center.
She passed Ariel Inn, the hotel being like a Swiss Chalet, perched on some convenient rocks that rose to a height above street level. A few fairly nimble chamois were leaping over these rocks and Warble heard a fairy-like chime of bells as afternoon tea was announced.
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