IX. THE LAST ACT OF THE GOLD BAG COMEDY
"May I go out, ma'am, and see what they'll be givin' me for the gold bag?" Kate asked, when the unpacking—for a few days—was done at a Los Angeles hotel.
This was a sore subject with Angela. She believed that she disliked the bag; but also she disliked having it go out of her life beyond recall. "Think of the money he spent, and the trouble he took!" something seemed to moan in her mind. But with an impersonal air she gave Kate permission, dismissing the past as represented by the Hilliard incident, and plunging into the joy of arranging future motor-cars and trains—a future which was to concern her, and Kate, and Kate's cat alone, not Mr. Hilliard.
A singularly sympathetic and apparently intelligent hotel clerk not only advised a motor for sightseeing in the neighbourhood, but recommended one owned and invented by a friend. It was a "clipper," he said; could do anything but climb trees or jump brooks, and might be hired by Mrs. May, at a reasonable price, for a day, a week, a month, a year. Angela felt bound to say that she should like to see it; and—almost before the last word was out of her mouth—the garage was rung up by telephone.
The car arrived with startling promptness, and if Angela had been given time to think it might have occurred to her that there was not, perhaps, as much competition for this new invention as the hotel clerk had implied. The inventor, who was driver and chauffeur as well, bore a striking resemblance to a sulky codfish, but his half-boiled eyes lighted up and glittered (even as his car glittered with blue paint), at the prospect of business. Other vehicles were now being produced by a firm who had bought his patent, said he, but at present his own; appropriately named the "Model," was the "only one running." He lifted the brilliant bonnet, and revealed intricate things, all new and silvery and glistening like crystallized sugar. Angela fell an easy victim. She knew nothing about the mechanical virtues and vices of cars, though she had two at home for her own use, and the Prince a dozen, valued only less than his aeroplanes. Hers had been gray and dark green. She had always wanted a blue car, and this was a lovely colour. Though she was no more vain than a pretty young woman ought to be, she consented to an experimental run, with an undertone of conviction that the car would become her as a background.
As she made her decision, Kate arrived, breathless with the excitement of bargaining, to find her mistress on the curbstone.
"Oh, ma'am!" she panted. "I've done it! I've got five hundred dollars in me pocket!"
"And they've got the bag," Angela regretfully murmured.