“Now! It’ll only take a minute. I’ll wake up the slavey. She’ll help.”
“No! No! I’d rather do it myself. Oh, Gay, Kim’s asleep. Can’t we wait until morning?”
But somehow the fantastic procedure appealed tremendously to her love of the unexpected. Packing up and moving on. The irresponsible gaiety of it. The gas turned high. Out tumbled the contents of bureau drawers and boxes and trunks. Finery saved from just such another lucky day. Froth and foam of lace and silk strewn incongruously about this murky little chamber with its frayed carpet and stained walls and crazy chairs. They spoke in half whispers so as not to wake the child. They were themselves like two children, eager, excited, laughing.
“Where are we going, Gay?”
“Sherman. Or how would you like to try the Auditorium for a change? Rooms looking out over the lake.”
“Gay!” Her hands clasped as she knelt in front of a trunk.
“Next week we’ll run down to West Baden. Do us good. During the day we can walk and drive or ride. You ought to learn to ride, Nola. In the evening we can take a whirl at Sam Maddock’s layout.”
“Oh, don’t play there—not much, I mean. Let’s try to keep what we have for a little while.”
“After all, we may as well give Sam a chance to pay our expenses. Remember the last time we were down I won a thousand at roulette alone—and roulette isn’t my game.”
He awoke the landlady and paid his bill in the middle of the night. She did not resent being thus disturbed. Women rarely resented Gaylord Ravenal’s lack of consideration. They were off in a hack fetched by Ravenal from the near-by cab stand. It was no novelty for Kim to fall asleep in the dingy discomfort of a north side rooming house and to wake up amidst the bright luxuriousness of a hotel suite, without ever having been conscious of the events which had wrought this change. Instead of milk out of the bottle and an egg cooked over the gas jet, there was a shining breakfast tray bearing mysterious round-domed dishes whose covers you whipped off to disclose what not of savoury delights! Crisp curls of bacon, parsley-decked; eggs baked and actually bubbling in a brown crockery container; hot golden buttered toast. And her mother calling gaily in from the next room, “Drink your milk with your breakfast, Kim darling! Don’t gulp it all down in one swallow at the end.”