The first speaker protested, “Well, I guess I ought to be able to do it. I’ve practiced for hours in front of the glass doing it.”
“For mercy’s sake that’s nothing. So have I. Who hasn’t?”
Madeleine referred the question to Lydia, “Lyd has seen her later than anybody. She saw her in London. Just think of going to the theater in London—as if it was anywhere. She says they’re crazy about her over there.”
“Oh, wild!” Lydia told them. “Her picture’s in every single window!”
“Which one? Which one?” they clamored, hanging on her answer breathlessly.
“That fascinating one with the rose, where she’s holding her head sideways and—” Oh, yes, they had that one, their exclamation cut her short, relieved that their collections were complete.
“Lyd met a woman on the steamer coming back whose sister-in-law has the same hairdresser,” Madeleine went on.
They were electrified. “Oh, honestly? Is it her own?” They trembled visibly before solution of a problem which had puzzled them, as they would have said, “for eternities.”
“Every hair,” Lydia affirmed, “and naturally that color.”
Their enthusiasm was prodigious, “How grand! How perfectly grand!”