“How’de, everybody!” She paused, in sudden embarrassment, the color mounting to her softly waved black hair.
Mr. Larry studied her with approving glance.
“Stunning, Claire. Whether it cost fifty dollars or five hundred.”
“Less than fifty. Oh, I’m learning,” she said with a happy little laugh.
“It was awfully good of you to let me see it before you had danced some of the freshness out of it,” said Mrs. Larry.
“Oh, I just had to come. You see——” She stopped—and again the beautiful color flooded her face.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Larry, as, sensing the need of greater privacy, she slipped her hand through Claire’s arm and led her down to the guest room. “But first, let me catch up your hair a bit.”
Mr. Larry, all unconscious that the spirit of romance had tripped into the apartment with the coral-tinted vision, buried himself in his paper. Safe on the other side of the guest room door, Mrs. Larry held the radiant girl a little closer.
“Claire, dear, what has come over you?”
“This,” answered Claire in a voice that trembled with happiness. She held out her hand, and in the soft light from a silk-shaded electrolier Mrs. Larry caught the gleam of the diamond which had traveled to Kansas City and back.